Cerebral Hemorrhage was a short-lived NYDM from the late 90’s to the early 00’s.  In 2001 they released their only album Exempting Reality.  They combined the slam and style of Internal Bleeding, Dehumanized, and Repudilation.  All NY slam bands and I’ve even read online reviews about the debut album and vocalist Matthew Szablewicz being compared to me from my Internal Bleeding days.

The album flew under my radar but with the the band reforming in 2024, Comatose Music swooped in have remastered and reissued this debut album.  The reissue sports a new nifty album cover and the seven original songs all remastered.  So let’s go back to the mid-late 90’s era Long Island Death Metal scene for a little walk down memory lane.  With our (Internal Bleeding) debut album, Voracious Contempt in 1995, we had a certain guitar tone.  A heavy fuzz to the guitar sound, which began to get emulated right after the album dropped.  Cerebral Hemorrhage seemingly has a pretty exact guitar tone on this debut album and it really is quite killer to hear this.

“Beaten and Dismembered” starts right off the jump, with almost an old-school Cryptopsy-styled blast with the old-school Internal Bleeding guitar tone and the song has lots of galloping moments and then the isolated guitar moment at the 1.05 mark is the signal for the slam.  This is a signature IB moment from my run with the band from 1994-1997.  This slam is punishing and there are some cool guitar melodies as well from Matt Doreson and some basassery drumming from Tom Kivatinos.  I’ve known Tommy for a while and he would eventually go on to form Tomorrow’s Victim.  This song has a variety of tempo shifts and there are vocals where at times it’s either one of the Matt’s sounding like Lord Worm from Cryptopsy with the way he sang the lower gutturals, then there are shifts that sound like my style as well.  Very cool and powerful vocals across the album.

“Remnants of the Final Solution” has a brief intro, then starts slow with a variety of vocals tones, with some Deicide influence to boot.  Massive blasting as well and come to think of it that snare drum sound is a direct influence from Repudilation.  Some people are not fans of that pop snare drum sound, so make sure you’re prepared for it.  This song slows down to a mid-paced groove with nice old-school gutturals to boot.

One of the things this band did that was a little out of the ordinary is to break from their brutality and get into some classical moments.  The 3.30 tempo shift with isolated bass guitar and acoustics, has almost a Cynic jazzy feel, which really is an abrupt shift to what was just happening a few seconds prior.  The mid-paced heavy groove returns and this is quite an interesting song with that earlier tempo shift taking me off guard.

“Resulting in Homicide” is a great album ender, especially with that isolated guitar tone going right into a brutal slam, with killer gutturals.  You’re going to want to pit all damn day to this song.  Staying mostly in a mid-paced groove slam for its duration the song does inject another one of those jazzy tempo shifts.  It’s cool when the song returns to the heaviness because it’s such a departure from the soft playing.  Really nice album closer.

Exempting Reality gets a boost with the remastering with the songs having more bite and the loudness being increased.  The guitars are a bit more upfront and overall this is a nice sound upgrade that does not detract from the original recording.  Cerebral Hemorrhage, I am sure with reforming, has plans to write and release new music.  As a debut album, this is a really nice display of the LINY Death Metal scene from the mid-late 90’s time period. Fun bouncy slams!!

[Visit the band's website]

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