(written by Islander)
Somehow, in our 16+ years of existence, today is the first time we’ve featured the music of the Italian band Carcharodon. It’s especially mystifying because the band’s discography includes four albums and a slew of shorter releases, and because the band’s genre-crossing music hits dead-center in some of our favored wheelhouses. In the case of the Carcharodon hellions, however, late is definitely better than never.
The occasion for us getting on board the Carcharodon road-hogs is the forthcoming September 26 release of their fifth album by Satanath Records. The name of the new album is Never On Your Side, and the song from that album which we’re bringing you today is “The Balls’ Law“.
If, like us, you’re only now discovering the music of Carcharodon, the band was founded in 2003 by brothers Boggio and Pixo, and they were eventually joined by drummer Nuzzi. The trio’s music has evolved in ways that can be described as “blending the raw aggression of Old School Death Metal and Death ’n’ Roll with the crushing weight of Sludge Doom and the unrelenting speed of Thrash”.
Speaking of speed, the band seem to have kept a heavier foot on the accelerator for this new full-length, but without jettisoning their slower, uglier, more doomed, and more brutish inclinations. The song you’re about to hear proves all this (although, as you’ll find at the very end of this post, it’s not nearly as fast as the album’s first single).
“The Balls’ Law” also has its freakish aspects, which become immediately apparent in a quick bit of lead-guitar dementia at the outset, and that becomes apparent again in subsequent spurts of screeching fretwork. The song’s overture also includes music that seems to dismally groan, which proves to be a foretaste of other things to come.
But before those things come, Carcharodon kick the music into high gear, driving ahead with vigorously hammering beats, riffing that slashes and slugs (but also still moans), and beefy bass-throbs you can feel in your bowels.
Around the song’s mid-point Carcharodon also inflict a brutish, booming beating — a dose of hardcore thuggery right before the song slows even more, delivering a truly bone-smashing breakdown — and that’s when the music really becomes a catastrophically dismal experience, albeit with some final bits of berserk guitar torture in the mix, and a quick closing phase of up-tempo marauding.
Throughout the song, the vocals are barbaric, the kind of cut-throat growls, fanatical howls, and strangled screams that make you think it’s too late to vaccinate the vocalists for rabies.
CARCHARODON:
Pixo – bass, growl
Boggio – guitars, screams
Nuzzi – drums, backing vocals
Fabio Cuomo – guest keyboards (track 10)
Never On Your Side was recorded, mixed, and mastered by Andrea Cipriani (aka Cerealiciros) at Il Pozzo Recording Studios. The front cover artwork-collage was made by Carcharodon, and band photos were made by Morgana and Andrea Cipriani.
Satanath will release the album in a jewel-box CD edition with an 8-page booklet, and digitally. Below, we’re also sharing with you the new album’s title song — a rapidly gear-shifting piece of mayhem that’s part high-octane grindcore, part hell-fired thrash, and part hulking monstrosity.
PRE-ORDER:
https://satanath.bandcamp.com/album/sat430-carcharodon-never-on-your-side-2026
CARCHARODON:
https://carcharodon.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/carcharodonband
https://www.instagram.com/carcharodon_band