(TheMadIsraeli reviews the new 13th album by Cannibal Corpse.)

Cannibal Corpse at this point really are in their musical stride. Even beyond the massive leap in musical proficiency the band made when Corpsegrinder replaced Barnes on vocals, the way they’ve been firing on all cylinders since The Wretched Spawn is really unmatched in the careers of many other long-standing extreme metal bands. In other cases, the quality might still be great, but it hasn’t consistently improved as it has in the discography of Cannibal Corpse. A Skeletal Domain follows Torture, which is a pretty difficult album to surmount, considering it was easily the most savage album they’d ever recorded. A Skeletal Domain is indeed better than its predecessor, though whether you agree may depend on whether you like the approach they’ve taken on this new one.

A Skeletal Domain is a very tactical technical death metal record. Everything about it feels calculated, refined, ground into a fine powder that shimmers like diamonds and will cut flesh at the touch. It’s a very riffy album in the spirit of the Jack Owen/Chris Barnes era, but with Pat O’Brien’s sense of guitar acrobatics. The mix is much cleaner, which really accents this more refined approach as well. I previously would’ve called Evisceration Plague their song-writing record. THIS is their song-writing record in definitive terms. Everything stays true to the Corpsegrinder-era Corpse spirit, but it is at the same time everything Torture was not. I praised Torture for its rather primal assault on the senses, and while A Skeletal Domain is definitely the equivalent of being beaten to death and mauled by a mandrill, it’s much more technical, the song structures much more progressive and more unconventional. Continue reading »