Turkish brutes Carnophage have been slinging their brand of death metal since the early 00’s.  Matter of a Darker Nature is their third album and it’s been eight long years since their last album, Monument.

This is 8 songs in 33 minutes of no-frills brutal death metal in the vein of the likes of Dying Fetus, Gorgasm..You get the point.  The band wastes no time with intros, just laying waste to us all with the album opener, “In My Bones”.  This track immediately opens with a monstrous blast than slows down a bit and Oral Akyol’s vocals are brutishly gruff, yet fairly understandable. He has a powerful delivery and some cool ass growls.  This song is beefy to the max.  Very heavy guitar tone courtesy of Mert Kaya and Serhat Kaya.  Bengi Öztürk’s bass guitar has a nice undercurrent of heaviness when those slower moments happen.  Those rhythm parts are super heavy.  Onur Özçelik is a machine behind the drum kit.  Ferocious.  Great album opener.

“Until the Darkness Kills the Light” is up next and is more brutality, however with some of the growls Oral’s vocals appear to be strained, thus around the minute or so mark where he lets out a growl, it cracks.  This happens a few times and I feel the band should have looked into these moments a little more and had the vocalist do another take.  This song has some great riffing and those blast beats are pummeling AF.  The blasting towards the end with the higher register, think Jason Netherton, from Misery Index, style, is quite good.  The ending growl though, cracks while he vocalist strains to hold out the growl length.

The title track begins quite heavy and this mid-paced heaviness is the highlight of what Carnophage does so well.  The song gets into a mid-paced gallop with some breathtaking double bass moments.  I love how the song gets into this jumpy groove section and I can imagine a sea of bodies crashing into one another.  Some terrific blasting erupts and double-pounding drum moments’ drive this sucker into you heart  fairly quickly.  More mid-paced pummeling heaviness and blasts.  I feel this song could have benefitted a bit more if the speed was scaled back.  Let those slower grinding heavier moments resonate a little longer fellas, before blasting 1,000 BPM’S.

“From Possibility to Actuality” ends the album in brutal fashion – like you were expecting something different?  Monstrous blast beat to open the song and double pounding drum moments.  The song slows into the mid-paced heaviness, before erupting into more blast beats.  The slow down at the 1.45 section is a highlight, especially with the guitar and drum work.  There is even a melodic guitar solo, towards the end of the song, as well.  The vocals over this part are nicely done, with the effects they toss in.

Matter of a Darker Nature by Carnophage certainly has brutality stamped all over the album.  I would have liked for the band to stay with some of those slower moments a bit more, since they pack a huge wallop to the gulliver.

Additionally; there should have been a little more time spent with the vocal parts, to allow the singer maybe to hit another take or two so the growls cracking were not so apparent.  The engineer should have caught those.  Regardless, this is some hefty beefy no frills brutal death metal, that has a bunch of cool moments sprinkled throughout the album.

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