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LIK
Carnage

Metal Blade (2018)
Rating: 8/10

Straight up death metal – it doesn’t get much clearer than that. But is it any good? Let me put it to you this way, the first song, ‘To Kill’, hits you with an old school Necrophobic / Brutality vibe so strong it feels like someone picked up a shovel and knocked you in the side of your head with it. And then they jump back in the saddle and take another swing at you with their second song, ‘Rid You Of Your Flesh’. And it’s like that through the entire record.

If you’re wondering who this band is or even what their name means, well, Lik means “corpse” in Swedish and sure enough the band hails from Sweden. They have been around since 2014 and have now released two records, their first being 2015’s Mass Funeral Evocation.

There’s a very cool rawness to this disc which more than likely is attributed to the fact that the band likes to record as close to live as possible, with very little editing as well. Musically, Lik sports a no frills, classic death metal sound which they’ve nailed to a tee.

If you’re looking for texture and layer and maybe different dimensions or different sides of the band to be displayed, it doesn’t happen. And that’s good. Lik are extremely good at what they do which is toy with a sound and heaviness that veers between Hellhammer / Celtic Frost and Broken Hope / Carcass, just to name a few. And don’t forget the Swedish death metal influence either. That runs through this record like embalming fluid through a tube.

Song subject matter is pretty standard fare – death, horror, cannibalism, etc. Go back and listen to Mass Funeral Evocation, as Carnage is simply an extension of that record. Normally I’d rail against a band that doesn’t show much progression or dimensionality to either their songwriting or their music, but with Lik I don’t want them to change; I like who they are and how they sound. I’ll take classic death metal any day over a lot of the nonsense that’s trying to get passed off as death metal now. It just doesn’t work for me.

Making good death metal is very much like writing a good horror novel or scripting a solid horror movie. Either you have the skills to do it, or you don’t and it shows. Lik kills it, and standout songs include ‘Death Cult’, ‘Celebration Of The Twisted’, and ‘Cannibalistic Infancy’.

Lik isn’t reinventing the wheel here, they’re just making sure that their wheel is sick enough and strong enough to roll over the competition and crush it, which they certainly do with their second record. You really need to check Carnage out. It’s a record that will make ya bleed.

Theron Moore

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