There’s no denying that Cannibal Corpse are one of the absolute greatest death metal bands in the history of extreme metal. They’ve came such a long way being around since the late 1980’s and have created the most symbolic, creative, engrossed albums in history. From the Barnes era of Eaten Back To Life to The Bleeding, to the later half of the band’s career with albums such as Vile, Gallery Of Suicide, Gore Obsessed, Bloodthirst and my favorite 2000’s era release of The Wretched Spawn, Cannibal Corpse are one of the most influential, iconic, controversial, hard-earned and recognized bands in the scene selling more than 3,000,000 records worldwide and have paved the way to influence other bands within the underground.
Fast forward to 2021, we have the latest album by the band titled Violence Unimagined and is the first release since 2017’s Red Before Black which not only was a great album front to back, but this time around marks the first official Cannibal Corpse album to feature longtime guitarist, producer and vocalist Erik Rutan of Hate Eternal whom in my opinion, is one of the most underrated and important figures in the genre and is the first album to not feature Pat O’Brien. With Violence Unimagined, They’ve taken the production from Bloodthrist, Kill and Torture to create the most sharpest and well produced Cannibal Corpse albums to date and bar none this is the band’s finest material they’ve done in years.
From the matured songwriting, extreme diversity of destructible variations and a uniquely creativeness so ferocious of layered guitars, drums, bass and the visceral vocals of George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher Red Before Black shied away the gruesome and highly controversial album artwork in the past, musically and lyrically Cannibal Corpse takes the horrifying inspirational lyrics and brutality death metal and refined over two decades which later then brings a mash-up of plagued abilities and aforementioned violently aggressive blast beats, fast paced guitar structures and drum fills so impacted that this album is hungrier, matured and aggressive all around. It even has little trace of technicality, thrash and old school death metal sensations which often times the mixing variety of melody and raw delivering proficiency shows Cannibal Corpse gets progressively better album after another with no copy and paste alternatives which therefore showcases Cannibal Corpse’s traditional sound to become fresh and monstrous.
Even with songs such as Murderous Rampage, Cerements of the Flayed, Ritual Annihilation, Condemnation Contagion and Surround, Kill, Devour embodied the loud-hard in your face aggressiveness to have complex and progressive styled structures to keep instrumentals, vocals and production to be formulated and well toned. In terms of the musicianship, skill performance, more precise and diverse instrumentation work to heavily concentrate on thrashing, grinding and stirring the extreme metal arrangements aligned from one another, I can tell you for granted this album is heavy, groovy at times and grindy to where I’m almost detecting their earliest records where it just works beginning to end. Violence Unimagined is a album reaching excellence, intelligence, scorching death metal headbanging actions and offering the beautiful transitions the band has pulled off in a long time will satisfy any metal fan. This is recommended for any Cannibal Corpse fan.
Overall Score: 9.5/10
Review by Jake Butler
