Among the many thrills that serious fans of heavy music can experience, if we’re lucky, is to be seized by the music of a new band at their inception and then watch as they progress from strength to further strength with each new release. That has certainly been the case with the black/death band Carcinoma from Plymouth, UK.

They made their debut with a self-titled demo in 2015, about which we wrote here: “The music is hard to pin down, which is one reason it is so interesting. In part it’s ugly, grinding, tearing noise, the kind of rancid death metal that wants to cut the legs out from under you and then put the remains through a meat tenderizer. In part it’s pounding, bleak, sludgy doom. In part it’s a tornado of black thrashing mayhem. And in part it’s a transmission of disorienting signals from space (or an interdimensional void, take your pick). However you want to sum it up, it’s full of venom and fury, and like a pit of vipers with you teetering on the edge, it gets the adrenaline flowing.”

And then came Apanthropinization, their 2018 split with Abyssal, released by Goatprayer Records. On that album-length record (reviewed here), they contributed four truly harrowing tracks, braiding together strands of black, death, and doom metal to achieve sensations of fracturing sanity and apocalyptic destructiveness. Dissonance reigned supreme, fueling the music’s atmosphere of murderous, inhuman lunacy. Chaos also reigned supreme, although Carcinoma wisely chose not to make their four songs simply 20 minutes of non-stop nuclear vulcanism.

And now we’re delighted to announce that Carcinoma will be releasing a debut album named Labascation on February 5, 2021, from which we’re presenting a track called “Bloated Parasites”. It’s evidence that as powerfully good as Carcinoma’s past releases have been, the new one will be the best yet. Continue reading »