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CARTILAGE
The Deader The Better

Creator-Destructor (2022)
Rating: 7/10

The Deader The Better is San Francisco, California-based Cartilage’s second full-length offering, and comes five years after 2017 debut album Dialect Of The Dead.

Standard death / grind is the order of the day here, with ‘Slaughterday At The Chopping Mall’, ‘The Deader The Better’ and ‘I Skin You’ providing the starters, while ‘Mallet Wielding Maniac’, ‘Gurgitor’, ‘Cellar Full Of Stiffs’ and ‘Axe Scratcher’ are served as the main course, with a dollop of ‘Gashes To Ashes’, ‘The Casket Crawler Catastrophe’ and a cover of Impetigo’s ‘Boneyard’ for dessert.

Everything is delivered as a short, sharp sickly slurp as the five-piece drifts between chunky death metal and sleazy grind. You’ve heard such goofiness many times previous, but if delivered right it can make for an entertaining and garish experience.

The obvious Carcass influence is there, wafting like a foul odour off rotten meat as the title track gurgles in cartoon fashion amidst slurry of accessible riffage and other discarded garbage.

Very much tongue-in-cheek, and thankfully so, Cartilage rattle off numerous comedic horror stories at full throttle, nodding with partially severed head to Exhumed. ‘I Skin You’ is more hyper hyperbole, with the slurping vocal quacks and frantic percussion all thrown into the melting pot for a cannibal stew. But some may crave the slower, fleshy, more scanned delights of cuts such as ‘Cellar Full Of Stiffs’ with its mid-tempo thuggery, or further Carcass worship in the deformed flatulence of ‘Mallet Wielding Maniac’ and ‘Gashes To Ashes’.

Of course it’s all very limited, but this is an album that is happy to bask in its own bile. And for added festering fun and freakish frolic of gore, then get yourself on the list for the splatter vinyl release for extra kaleidoscopic horror.

Neil Arnold

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