California’s Laceration released a really nice debut album in 2021, Demise.  While there were some elements of thrash metal interwoven into their sounds, mainly with some of the solos, still not enough to be a hybrid death/thrash band.  The band is death metal.

Following up on that debut album with a slightly shorter sophomore effort, I Erode is pretty blistering.  After the thankfully brief instrumental, “Degradation”, “Excised” comes out of the starting gates, relentlessly with the blasts and Luke Cazares’ vocals emulating Luc Lemay from the first two Gorguts albums pretty spot on.  The opening guitar solo has a James Murphy tinge to it as well.  The song enters into some melodic moments, which also showcases some of their new drummer, Aerin Johnson’s, talents.  Excellent growls and blasting towards the end of the song, especially when the double pounding hits to round out the song.  This is an excellent song.

“Sadistic Enthrallment” is up next and the old school Gorguts influence continues on.  Scorching blasts then the tune settles into a great mid-paced rumbler, before more blasts erupt.  The old-school beat towards the end, right before the blast is pure 1990.  It will take you back to Tampa, Florida a bygone era, with tremendous death metal sounds erupting all over the place.  “Dreams of the Formless” is an excellent song title, however, it’s another short instrumental.  This does have a lot of atmosphere and ethereal moments, however there are only 7 true songs since the other 2 are instrumentals.  For me instrumentals are filler.  “Carcerality” is up next and turns my frown upside down.  Truly an intense opening segment and the blasting is ferocious, especially at the 1.20 section, right after the growl.  This part is one of the best sections the band has ever written.  The mid-paced heaviness returns with the blistering double bass alongside a cup of pinch harmonics and squealing guitar solos.  I must also mention how I love the streamlined songs with the average run time of three-and-a-half minutes per song, which is the perfect amount of time.  It makes the songs punch your face much harder.  The title track is the longest, at six minutes you don’t have to worry that the song is going to start slow, nope!  Intense opening with the fast moments, as well as mixing all their various tempos together.  Slice and dice pinch harmonics added in and they’re mixed sharply!

Laceration’s I Erode may be my sleeper hit for 2024.  This bests their debut album and is quite fun to listen to.  The production is rather good, although the snare drum tone is a bit poppy and not a deep bass pop.  That’s really negligible, on my end and the album cover is awesome and eye-catching with the pile of corpses and color palette.  If Laceration were not on your radar before, then they need to be, now!

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