Having emerged on the scene when death metal was at its peak at the beginning of the nineties, Sinister has, apart from a short hiatus, steadily released a stream of straight-up death metal releases for more than twenty years. I lapped up their early releases which purveyed the quintessential death-grind sound that was becoming so big at the time. However I drifted away from much of the death metal scene as, like many, the darker mystique of black metal grabbed most of my attention. Therefore I missed a lot of releases, but occasionally I like to search for some new death metal that still retains that old sound.
And that is pretty much what I found with The Carnage Ending. Although retaining only one original member, it still feels like much the same band I remember, albeit with a more contemporary edge, particularly in terms of execution and production. Both are top notch. Everything is clear and well-defined in the mix, which really brings the flawless execution of all instruments to the fore.
After a terrible intro, which I always skip, the album starts off in brutal style, making it near impossible to stop banging your head for at least the first two songs. Musically it is pretty much straight forward death metal, which may not sound especially appealing other than the fact that it espouses everything that is good about that style. Tons of shorts blasts, oscillating between slow, choppy sections and all-out fast (and I mean fast) sections. Sprinkled throughout are sections of melody, the occasional lead, but not too much that is becomes annoying, making the album entirely catchy from start to end.
Although containing 11 tracks and spanning 48 minutes (which does include the aforementioned intro), there really aren’t any songs that would be described as bland fillers. The album closes with one of the catchier tracks, Final Destroyer, which leaves one with a sense of blissful contentment, yet at the same time wanting more.
The highlights for me are the clinically brutal drumming, which is recorded beautifully and at times reaches break-neck speeds, and the dual guitars which are devastatingly heavy, but deceptively intricate and diverse throughout the album. The vocals are fairly bland, being the guttural every-line-delivered-much-the-same variety, but they aren’t distractingly bad that it detracts too much from the album as a whole.
As mentioned earlier, I haven’t heard most of the albums preceding this one, so I can’t say how they compare, but I am certainly looking forward to the new one, which, in keeping up with their regular output, will arrive very soon. In conclusion, if you are someone who likes the traditional death-grind sound, yet prefer to cherry pick the better releases, this is a great one to get. Even though this album treads no new ground in this genre, it does what it does with near flawless and near fatal results.
Tracks
- Gates of Blood (Intro)
- Unheavenly Domain
- Transylvania (City of the Damned)
- My Casual Enemy
- Crown of Thorns
- The Carnage Ending
- Oath of Rebith
- Regarding The Imagery
- Blood Ecstasy
- Defamatory Content
- The Final Destroyer
If you like it, please buy it on their official website/merchandise.
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