Label: Vrykoblast Productions
Release date: February 22nd, 2025
So, it’s time to leave alone “obvious” countries or even continents and visit some “exotic” one, which I love to do the most. And let’s be honest, Singapore, even if it always had and still has quite huge, especially if we’re comparing it with the size of the country, and surely a good scene, is for most of you metal terra incognita. Anyway, Cardiac Necropsy who was born as Infernal Scum is one of these ensembles who created the Metal scene in their motherland. The truth is they existed only more or less two years and then disbanded, leaving no sign of their existence. But it came from the ashes, with only one original member, vocalist Yusri maha Durjana, in the line-up, 2000. “Laknat” is their third full-length released by legendary, at least in their corner of the world and for me, even if once it was called a little otherwise, Vrykoloblast Productions, February 22nd.
Album contains nine songs, which take almost, without seven seconds, thirty seven minutes. As you can see, guys don’t fuck around too much, even if tracks aren’t very short. Well, to be honest, they have, let’s call it, standard length for the genre our Metal brothers from Singapore play – the shortest one, “Epoch of Kawafir”, is about three minutes and thirty-three seconds. And what sub-genre of our beloved music I’m talking about? Well, answer to this question you’ll find below. At the moment I can tell you only one thing. Description you can find on some portal dedicated to Metal bands and labels isn’t exactly what we’re able to listen to in my opinion. I mean, the first mentioned genre is correct, but I somehow can’t hear the second one here. Well, I think the person who wrote this description means some lyrics’ topic topic for some kinds of such creativity – porn and gore.
And what genre, the one which’s name is used correctly and describe well the music we’re dealing here with, I’m speaking about is death metal. By the way, it wasn’t always like that. I mean, as Infernal Scum guys played thrash, then, after changing the name, black/death. But the only important thing here is what they play today, isn’t it? So, to make it short, that’s technical and brutal shit, which’ll smash your face for sure. Tempo isn’t, mostly at least, too fast, but is it so important? No! As I wrote many times before, and I’ll probably do it many times in the future, brutality isn’t only about beating light or even sound speed. Actually, in my world it’s even contrary – the most bands who play as fast as they can are more or less boring ones and sound not too brutal. Riffs, as it should be in case of such playing, are broken, mostly quite short and change often. Of course, here and there you can listen to some sick guitar tricks making music a little disharmonic. That’s why I associate it with Austrian old school. Don’t take me wrong, you’ll not find here the same or even very similar music you have on “Expositionsprophylaxe” or “For God Your Soul… for Me Your Flesh”. It’s only about a similar way of playing guitar as Patrick Klopf or Don Cochino used to do on the masterpieces mentioned before. Drumming is also very intensive and at the same time sophisticated, with huge participation (those who read my writings for a long time, know very well what my approach to the matter is) of cymbals.
Anyway, I also hear some serious influences of some American or even European ensembles. But guys do things their own way and, since it seems I have experienced ears, I recognize what corner of the world they’re coming from. Bands coming from South-East Asia, especially Malay Peninsula always had inclinations to play like that. Every death metal fan should check out this curse! So, write to them and ask about the stuff. As I know you can make a choice between the digital version and CD. But I’m not totally sure about it, so just ask them about it.
