Decapitated – Carnival is forever (2011)

After the band’s tragic accident in 2007, Vogg went to play with Vader for a while and then decided to re-activate Decapitated again. As you can expect, fans of the band have been very eager to be treated to a new release of Decapitated, and “Carnival is forever” delivers a mixed bag of punches that sometimes are what the fans expected, but other times they are way off.

If you remember and love the older Technical Death Metal Decapitated, you should forget about that and be on the mindset to listen to a Vader meets Meshuggah meets Gojira release. “Carnival is forever” presents us with a somewhat interesting Death/Thrash approach that bands like Vader have been perfecting for and entire career. Note that we are not saying this album is bad, we are only expressing that is quite different to what we expected from the band.

The opening track “The Knife” makes you immediately thing that you put on the last Meshuggah CD on your stereo. The guitars and drums sound very similar, but the vocals are the only thing that gives Decapitated away. The song is pretty solid, but it sounds a lot like somebody else for us to really pay any attention to it. “United” has a more traditional Death Metal feeling to it with some of the modern DM guitar work. This song at least has a bit more self identity than the opener, and is probably one of the best ones of the CD, particularly the solos section.

The experimental “Carnival is forever” clocks in at 8 minutes or so, and provides a very wide palette of sounds and different textures. While we enjoy it, we also think it has plenty of filler and repetitive sections that could have done without. Both “Homo Sum” and “404” are very powerful guitar driven tracks that make for the album’s best songs and the ‘down hill’ line as well. The other experimental track, “A View from a Hole”, feels very convoluted and slapped together, making it somewhat ineffective at getting the listener’s attention.

Closing the album we have “Pest” a brutal and very straightforward song with great guitar work and tight drumming, and the mega filler “Silence”. In this “Silence” song we have a very calm and somewhat boring track to calm the listener down before the end of the release. We could have easily done without this track, but I guess the band needed an extra 4 minutes to deliver a 40+ minute album to the label.

As one of the most expected albums of 2011, Decapitated’s “Carnival is forever” falls short of achieving anything, and will surely be unnoticed by Metal fans. If Vogg wanted to keep Decapitated’s legacy untouched, he should have started a new band. If you like average Death Metal with some technical/modern influences here and there, check this album out, but do not expect it to sound like old Decapitated.

Release: July 12th, 2011

Country: Poland