Record Exchange Boise

Reviews:

"Producer Neil Kernon is in grave danger of becoming the next Scott Burns, the ""it"" producer of the early '90s underground death metal insurgence. After recording some of the era's most important records by Obituary, Death and Suffocation, Burns allowed himself to be overused by lesser groups; by 1995, his production credits were viewed as a scarlet ""D,"" signifying only the presence of dismal, dumb death metal. In the past year alone, producer Kernon has mirrored that path, working with young death dealers such as Skinless, Exhumed, Akercocke and now two of Burns' earliest death metal credits, Cannibal Corpse and Deicide.

Not even Kernon can save the damned souls of the latter. After their final pair of records for longtime label Roadrunner (2000's dreadful Insineratehymn and 2001's even worse In Torment in Hell), Deicide's Earache debut Scars of the Crucifix isn't quite the ""return to form"" it's been billed. In fact, head demon Glen Benton has simply recycled the same old tired riffs with his customary Christian denunciations, spanning the lyrical gamut from ""Mad at God"" all the way to ""F*** Your God."" And with only nine tracks and 26 minutes of material, Deicide aren't really giving their devoted disciples much to worship-though by keeping it short they certainly do the rest of us a favor.

Cannibal Corpse, on the other hand, appear to be issuing a cry for help with their new track ""Nothing Left to Mutilate."" After nine full-length studio albums of disemboweling and filleting, it seems there is indeed, well, nothing left to mutilate. Doing their best to evolve on The Wretched Spawn, Cannibal explore entertaining new means of fatality (being stoned with severed heads, getting flattened by a landslide of decaying bodies), but ultimately they deviate little-okay, not at all-from 2002's also-Kernon-produced Gore Obsessed. Not bad, but non-essential efforts like this won't help you stay employed for long. Just ask Scott Burns.

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