Carnifex - Until I Feel Nothing

Sand Diego's Carnifex are presenting us with their fourth full length release this week. Entitled Until I Feel Nothing. This album got me pretty excited I have to say. Carnifex is a good deathcore band, but they've never really been on my top list. However when I heard that Tim Lambesis was producing this one I let my hopes get up.

Now my hopes were somewhat high because of that, and lets say they weren't exactly met. Not that this is a bad album. It's at least as good as Hell Chose Me, which was a petty great release all around and pretty enjoyable. I just had hoped for a little bit more.

Tim's a great producer, who produced the last two Impending Doom albums, which I love, and many other albums, and happens to be in As I Lay Dying, both one of my favorite bands, and one of the first real metal bands I got into. He did a great job with the production side of things, the album as a whole sounds fantastic. It's just not entirely original, and doesn't have as many hooks or notable portions as I would like.

'A Grave To Blame' is a good example of one of the better songs on the album though. It's a barrage of fast guitars, drums, and vocal chord ripping screams. 'Dead But Dreaming' continues the ferocity of the album, and begins to add these sort of quiet choral portions here and there in the background to try and give the album an ominous feel.

'Creation Defaced' is the first really noticeably different song on the album, as it slows things down halfway through to have a creepy ambient section, that is eerily nice, but is again broken by a wall of sound, and the first real hook for the album "I Dream Of the End Of The World" and shortly after "I'll Burn This World Down!"

The title track tries to continue this by ending the song in a simiarly eerie way, which is actually kind of cool. The next song starts on an odd electric note that catches your attention again and then the barrage of noise grabs hold and keeps your attention.

'Curse Your Name' is a pretty good way to end of the album, It's fast, has some semi melodic elements, and sees the return of those choral elements to help tie the album together as a whole.

All in all, it's an above average deathcore album. Again on the same level as Hell Chose Me, but I personally was hoping for a bit more. Anyways it's definitely worth a spin or two, especially if your a Carnifex fan.