
Gravy of your blood, forced down through your throat!
-- Carrion --
29/06/2018
Stijn Daneels

Album genres:
■ | Death Metal |
■ | Gingercore |
Album artists:
■ | Sven Van Severen | Vocals |
■ | Mathieu Vander Vennet | Guitars |
■ | Jan Van den Berghe | Guitars |
■ | Sam Philipsen | Bass |
[METAL
SHREDDER REPORTING]
Carrion was
one of the first bands I laid my eyes, ears and hands on (ok, that last one isn’t
that accurate) when I began shredding my way through all rock and metal back in
2015. I bought their debut release, enjoyed shredding it and I quickly became
friends with guitarist Mathieu Vander Vennet. A mere year later he already
began hyping me up for his band’s follow-up album. Well, it’s finally here! Let
the long awaited shredding begin!
[SHREDDING THE BASICS]
Time To
Suffer is the second album from the Ghent based gingercore band Carrion. It
succeeds their 2012 debut release Revelations and is their first album
distributed by Danish record label Mighty Music. Carrion describe their music
as gingercore, but why do they call it after the red-haired race? That’s a
little inside joke but Carrion’s sound feels like a balanced mix between old-school
death metal and modern day metalcore. It’s a multi-faced beast with abrupt
tempo changes, razor sharp guitar riffs, brutal bass lines, blast beats, grunts,
growls, screams and everything else you can think of if you know those two
subgenres. But underneath all that viciousness you can clearly hear a band with
a tightly structured and flexible play style. It’s a polished experience with
sonic brutality carefully balanced off by slower, moodier tunes. Add to that
some shrieking solos and that’s gingercore for you!
[SHREDDING THE VISIONS]
On the
front cover there’s a bare-chested ginger man with half his face ripped off and
his intestines hanging out from his torn open stomach! It’s a realistic and
gruesome image, but it doesn’t look that horrifying either because of the
toned-down colors. A very accurate visual representation of Carrion’s sound.
Brutal, but stylish. As for the lyrics, well, don’t read them if you’re the squeamish
type as some of the lines Carrion have come up with are explicit and disturbing!
This review’s title is just one of the several ghastly phrases you’ll hear in
the album! The songs on Time To Suffer deal with such family friendly topics
like cannibalism, pestilence, warfare, denial of the afterlife and serial
killers ready to put a chainsaw to your throat! Speaking of chainsaws…
[THE SHARPEST SHRED]
In a track reminiscent
of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the album’s fourth song Urge is a ferocious
song that cuts through your brain with guitars that sound like roaring chainsaws!
Throw in some samples of people screaming in pain and flesh getting ripped open
and you’ve got one damn great slasher flick tune!
[THE BLUNTEST BLADE]
Death From
Deep Within, the album’s second instrumental track, felt repetitive and didn’t
add any effective introduction to the next track, which is Torment. It’s weird
to say this because I’m usually a sucker for instrumentals, but in this case, I’d
have left that instrumental out of the album because Torment is a good enough
track on its own and much better shows off Carrion’s major strength of
fast-paced death metal inspired shredding!
[THE SHREDDER SCORECARD]
7 zombie gingers
out of 10! For more than a year, Mathieu had been pumping me up for Carrion’s second
iteration and it didn’t disappoint! While their debut release Revelations
already hinted at the band’s potential, this album further drives the point
home that Carrion are becoming a force to be reckoned with to gingers and
non-gingers alike! I’m curious to see how they will evolve from this! But in
the meantime, here’s Time To Suffer’s final track, In The End, There’s Only
Death!