CARNIFEX

That CARNIFEX's "Hell Chose Me" is launched into full-on modern death metal mode with a blistering title track that is awfully similar to way that MALEVOLENT CREATION's "The Will to Kill" begins, sans the corrosive qualities, would seem to be good as far as signs go. As it turns out, CARNIFEX has not left the world of deathcore behind; they've just put more of an emphasis on the death part, which ends up paying some dividends. What we end up with is an album that is unquestionably virulent and arranged with some level of skillfulness, even though it becomes a bit of a struggle at times to maintain momentum and songwriting distinctiveness for the entire 35 minutes.

Pairing modern death with a seeming inability to stop themselves from interrupting even the most righteously speeding tempo with rubbery stutter-chunk (e.g. the still well written and memorable "Sorrowspell"),"Hell Chose Me" is nonetheless a rib-cracker. Often aligning a semi-traditional take on modern DM with the now driven-into-the-ground, yet capable in this case, racing sections of American-Swedish-melo-death (ala THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER, yes, again),on "Hell Chose Me" CARNIFEX are nothing if not serious about exploiting the intensity of the style. Few would argue that the album hits like a sledgehammer between the eyes, and sadistically so at that.

Co-produced by the band and Zach Ohren (a guy that knows a little something about the sub-genre),the sound is typically taut and thick, the only problem, depending on your point of view, one that results when antiseptic digitalization kills all the germs, including the ones that are nice to have around the studio when the brutal stuff is being recorded. Regardless, "Hell Chose Me" is a decent enough head-knocker that contains a few particularly strong songs and a remainder that hold up pretty well; just not quite well enough to push the album far enough away from the rest of the herd.