UK’s underrated Cancer return with their seventh full-length album, Inverted World.  I saw Cancer on their US tour in 1991 in support of their second album, Death Shall Rise, which is still their best album, and with James Murphy on guitar nonetheless.

After their third album, The Sins of Mankind, in 1993, the band, as did many of their peers in the 90s, went into a bizarre direction with Black Faith in 1995 and Spirit in Flames in 2005.  Both efforts saw the band embracing grunge, groove metal, and leaning towards traditional rock, as well as the band abandoning their classic band logo.  Suffice it to say, both those albums are abysmal efforts by the band.  Interesting enough, right after both these albums were released, the band broke up, until regrouping in 2013, in order for the band to get back to their true death metal roots.

The band’s sixth album Shadow Gripped, in 2018, and the follow-up EP, Ballcutter, a year later, proved the shift back to the band’s death metal roots.  It was great having vocalist/guitarist-mainman John Walker returning to his death metal vocals.  The band recaptured the essence of the first three albums, but mainly the first two.

Cancer returns with John, bringing in all new members, most notably Gabriel Valcázar as their new drummer from Wormed!!  Robert Navajas – guitars and Daniel Maganto on bass join in on the fray, and the opening guitar riff on “Enter the Gates” is a thing of beauty, and John lays down a killer vintage 90’s growl.  There are some nice guitar melodies and John’s vocals, well, it’s still John, however, he is enunciating a lot clearer now.  He really made a statement with the last album with his deep vocals, and while he always was more understandable than the typical death metal vocalist, on this album, his vocals are really clear.  I notice the vocals may not be as deep as the last album.

This song is also slower in nature, which is an interesting take on opening up your album, after the last album was released seven years ago.  I am like, open with a brutal fast death machine number!  This song has some galloping action going on until around the three-minute mark when the signature speedier Cancer moments take center stage.  We get a nifty little guitar solo as well.  I would say the first half of this song is rather vanilla until the speedier moments come in and Gabriel’s double bass and drum techniques truly shine.

“Until the Died” has a killer opening with the drums and then right into the faster moment with breathtaking double bass chest collapsing drums. A lot of instrumentation is going on, and it’s a full minute before the vocals come in, again very enunciated.  John sounds good; however, I would have liked for maybe the vocals not to be so pronounced with the enunciation.  It diminishes the brutal factor a tad.  There are some great guitar solo moments happening, something Cancer has been known for, and right after that mid-paced moment, the song gets faster, and the guitar soloing continues.  Some of the mid-paced galloping, though, is very headbang worthy of your time, with the timing of the beat.  A really fun moment.

“Amputate” was the first single the band chose to release in anticipation of this album.  That opening rhythm section works really well, as the song then slows down.  The mid-paced rumbling heaviness again has excellent drums, with the song title repeated multiple times throughout the song.  A good song to release prior to the album.  But I would have released “Covert Operations”, which starts fast from the opening jump.  Actually this would have been a great song to open the album with.  The riffing is maddening. The shifts of some of the stop and start riffing are definitely killer and this song is rooted in 1990/1991 vintage Cancer “Fucking” Cancer.

Inverted World is a good death metal album.  Nicely produced, and the musicianship is excellent, especially getting the Wormed drummer, as he shines throughout.  I prefer the band’s previous album Shadow Gripped, as I felt that was more brutal and harkened back, a lot more, to their first two albums.  This one is cleaner sounding, which is still cool, however, the band has increased more of that groovier sound to the songs, and while still death metal, at times, the album comes across pretty vanilla, and not dangerous, which is how death metal should be.  The album cover is certainly killer, and I love the two-toned classic band logo adorning the album cover. Decent effort, but Cancer can do better.

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