Label: Xtreem Music
Release date: February 4th, 2025
Exactly one month before releasing Avulsed’s newest masterpiece, Xtreem Music gave us the second full-length of Canadian Sarkasm. This is a very unlucky ensemble. I mean, originally they were born in 1990 under the name Traumatism which they changed after a few months, but split up after more or less four years. It was a period when guys recorded five demos, by the way. And in the present century they came back, or maybe better to say: they tried to come back, four times. But the first three attempts ended with failure. So, as you can see for yourselves, in this case saying ”up to three times art” doesn’t work. First three resurrections were short ones and there were no effects of it, if we don’t count the compilation released independently on CD (50 copies only) compilation of two demos and shows. Fortunately the fourth one turned out to be effective and guys got to work.
Anyway, if you think I used the word ”fortunately” by accident or to make the last sentence sound a little smarter, then you’re wrong! ”Carnicval of Atrocities” is a really good album, I’m happy as hell I got to know this and I can, with huge pleasure, spread a word about it. Full-length contains eight tracks taking almost (without six seconds) thirty six minutes. So, if you somehow don’t know yet that Xtreem Music specializes in extreme sub-genres of metal (death, thrash and black), you just got to know guys don’t fuck around. Residents of Granby play definitely old-school death metal, but only someone deaf as a stone couldn’t recognize some differences between them and Avfulsed. This isn’t only about François’ vocals. Yeah, that’s the easiest to recognize, but believe me – there are also differences in music itself. Actually, in my opinion Qebecers’ (by the way, maybe this is just my good or bad luck, but actually the very most Canadian bands I know, come from this French speaking province) creativity should be described by the term death/thrash metal. Personally I never cared about terms, but since I write reviews, and I do it for many years, I need to use them. Riffs are aggressive and sharp. What does you can even argue it’s thrash/death. But at the same time drumming is more death here, as well as the common structure of songs. I have of course some associations with classic and legendary ensembles, but… People who have known me or at least read my scribbles for a long time, know I mention here any names. Let’s be honest I’ll even not give you any ”signposts” like albums’ titles, musicians’ names and so on, because it’d make thing too easy. You can find it online, so if you didn’t deduced yet what ensembles I mean, you’re welcome to check it out before you decide to spend these few Euros on your CD, 12”, cassette or digital copy. And frankly I’m not sure what you are still doing here ! Yeah, the fact is there’s one more paragraph to read, but this is just continuation of my plans about this must-to-have full-length, so I won’t be angry at all if you just let them go to hell!
Well, the most important thing for me is how I feel while listening to ”Carnival…” like I was back in the early nineties or even the second half of the eighties. And I’m more than sure everyone who’s in, more or less, my age, will do the same. But I know there’s fortunately also quite a huge number of younger metalheads who love such music. It doesn’t matter, in my world that’s even the contrary, there’s nothing original in this music, I heard similar bands hundreds of times, especially mentioned before.
