Carnifex – GRAVESIDE CONFESSIONS (Review)

Like every other stupid German teenager, I naturally liked to listen to Carnifex a lot in the late 2000s. With their first four albums they had also really won me over at that time and made me a little fan. However, after their breakup and reunion (they called it that themselves, I just felt this PR stunt was unnecessary) the tides turned. Too many experiments with Black Metal that didn’t work, too overloaded songs, no hits. After the disappointing Slow Death and the pretty messed up World War X I had lost all hope in the band.

Now their new album GRAVESIDE CONFESSIONS (the capslock in the name comes from the band) should be released in 2021 and made me give them another chance. Possibly the old feeling comes up again.

I’ll put it this way: the title track definitely didn’t disappoint me, as it ramped up almost everything I used to like about the band and still enjoy today. Also the two following numbers, “PRAY FOR PEACE” and “SEVEN SOULS“, managed to give me pleasure in a genre I have actually outgrown.

The experiments with Black Metal stylistic devices that have been brought up here are also still very much within limits, which I appreciate. “CURSED” is more contemporary Deathcore oriented and reminds me of Lorna Shore, only clearer and less overloaded. The fact that Behemoth also exert a strong influence here can be noticed, for example the beginning of “CARRY US AWAY“, whose guitar sound clearly is based on that of the Poles.

Then, with “JANUARY NIGHTS,” a trend is brought back to life that at that time every band, from Whitechapel to Medea Rising, participated in: The loosening up, calm medley that ends in a storm. Here, however, really once again skillfully implemented.

With “DEAD BODIES EVERYWHERE” there is still a Korn cover in Carnifex and with “COLD DEAD SUMMER,” there is a song in which once again these guys decently step on the gas pedal. The conclusion “ALIVE FOR THE LAST TIME” once again leaves greetings at Thy Art is Murder before it goes towards the end with the three bonus songs.

On these tracks mentioned above, everything that Carnifex could do best before is done: Some thrashing at the beginning, until the songs is ended in the last third by an all-crushing breakdown. From this point of view the bonus songs are actually the most authentic journey into the past Carnifex offer here.

As a conclusion, GRAVESIDE CONFESSIONS can be seen with a clear conscience as the best album since the band’s reunion. Even if the sound is just over the top in places, many of the songs can really convince. It is just Deathcore, as you know the genre: Thrashing, breakdowns, thrashing, breakdowns, breakdowns and thrashing. So actually nothing done wrong. My teenage self would have liked it.