Aborted - The Archaic Abbatoir
I enjoyed Arborted’s Goremageddon album, other than the repulsive, Carcass-inspired lyrical imagery, mostly due to some of the electric guitar work that broke up what is basically run of the mill, riff oriented death metal. The Archaic Abbatoir, from a couple of years later, strikes me as slightly more dull with less interesting guitar work, in fact had I not known the years I would have thought the albums reversed in the lineage. Perhaps the band went for a more stripped down approach for this album, but generally I found the music lacking a bit in the excitement department, after all there’s really a lot of incredible music in the genre that surpasses this easily.
Cephalic Carnage - Exploiting Dysfunction
Probably the Cephalic Carnage album that brough the band quite a bit of attention, in many ways it might still be their best release as there’s a really ass kicking vigor throughout as the band blends doom, death and grindcore styles for an album of varying length songs. Carnage can do both pretty well as can be seen in their later EP work and the 15 minute title piece might be the centerpiece of the record with its heavy, involved riffing. I found the whole thing to be pretty involving throughout and could consider it compelling after another listen or two and it’s especially interesting to hear as I found Anomalies to be disappointing which has been holding me back on checking out Xenosapien.
Cardiacs - A Little Man and a House and the Whole World Window
Cardiacs history can be really difficult to sort out but in hunting through titles, this is actually what I was looking for, a collection of songs that document the music they were playing in the mid-80s. This has just about everything I was looking for and it all sounds amazing, although the performances probably can never match Cardiacs during their high energy live shows. This to my ears defines their early canon for which the band combined a pogoing, fast-paced punk rock with progressive rock aspirations, like a demented melding of Devo and Van der Graaf Generator. Ahead of everything else, assuming one can get the vocals, is the songwriting, which combines the progressive sense of the epic with a strange accessible style you could practically dance to. Definitely a good place to start with this all too underground British great.