Review Summary: ‘Cenotaph was formed…with the aim of performing some piece of the most brutal and the sickest music that has ever been played’. Great, just great.
The ever descending quality in extreme music is portrayed perfectly by the entire brutal/tech-death/gore sub genre. Taking elements from both death metal and grind, basing entire album concepts around autopsies/butchery/vomit as made famous by sh
it bands like Cannibal Corpse, and then attempting to seem innovative by making their music overly technical, the whole notion behind this type of music is just absurd. I’ll concede that it isn’t always this bad; Necrophagist’s
Onset of Putrification, an album that definitely has redeeming qualities, is an example where a band can make a song called ‘Fermented Offal Discharge’ or ‘Advanced Corpse Tumor’, and still convey a sense of talent (mostly due to Suicmez). Nevertheless,
Pseudo Verminal Cadaverium, by Turkey’s Cenotaph, is one such album that does not have any redeeming qualities.
Pseudo Verminal Cadaverium is unquestionably ‘brutal’ -- persistently so, to the extent that after listening to the first two tracks I simply had had enough. If you do force yourself to go on, you’ll find the album does not get any better; a constant barrage of drumming, riffs and terrible gutturals, void of any variation, for just under forty minutes, is basically what
Pseudo Verminal Cadaverium is as an album. The technicality behind the music is very unmemorable; the various ‘complex’ rhythms are repeated constantly, so much so that you would be surprised in finding out that the band didn’t just play the same song nine times. To make matters worse, the vocal performance is shocking. To complement the album’s focus on blood, vomit and fecal discharge, Cenotaph’s vocalist sounds like he enjoys consuming said matter from time to time. Giving him some credit, you will find both low gutturals, screams, and various tones in between on
Pseudo Verminal Cadaverium, it’s just that as much as he varies himself it doesn’t hide the fact that he sounds ridiculous. His indecipherable growls and screams sound like he’s trying to pull his stomach out from his mouth, which although may go well together with the band’s intentions, nonetheless results in an abysmal performance.
Ignoring the fact that the music is repetitive, ignoring the retarded concept, and even ignoring the poor vocal performance,
Psuedo Verminal Cadaverium is an album you should avoid simply because of the fact that it does absolutely nothing in terms of furthering its (sh
itty) genre. A poor album can be commended if it is original; Cenotaph are not original in the slightest, and unfortunately imitate the worst aspects of extreme death metal. Don’t waste your time.
