Seeing initially impressive technical death metal bands like Decapitated and Psycroptic slowly progress towards a style of death metal that incorporates the precision of technical death with the groove of Pantera and Meshuggah-spawned 90’s metal has, at times, been gut-wrenching. It took years for me to realize that these musicians were maturing towards their own ideal frame of reference for success. For their careers to progress, a middle ground between being underground extreme metal and salable, accessible heavy metal was necessary. The album that most fuels this style is perhaps Meshuggah‘s 1995 album ‘Destroy.Erase.Improve.’ Don’t worry, you absolutely won’t find any Djent on this groove metal influenced death metal album, but you will find technical staccato riffs and incredible production value. As sterile of a sledgehammer as it might seem, especially seeing how beefy and muscle-porn’d the members are in their latest music video, this is an extreme grower of an album that pounds out riffs relentlessly.

I didn’t know what to think of Dyscarnate’s first album ‘Enduring the Massacre’ as it came across as a deathcore take on Dying Fetus‘ style of death metal. While Dying Fetus remains grindy and messy with their hardcore influenced brutal death metal to this day, Dyscarnate went in the direction of clarity, precision and heaviness. Each album has been cleaner and less technical than the last, focusing on the groove and the testosterone-bellowed vocals above the death metal sound. If you loved the second album ‘And So It Came to Pass’ by all means this is a step up, go fuckin’ buy it now. Their sound has never been heavier. I haven’t heard such instantly nut-grinding guitar production since the last Nails record.

One of the perks of the new vocalist/bassist is that the two vocalists are now more successfully interchangeable. Their distinction comes with great effort as their delivery is remarkably identical; which, it turns out, sounds awesome when the two of them are shouting in unison. Their tone is very… ‘tough guy’ groove metal shouting that is a slightly death metal version of Gary Meskil from Pro-Pain. For the sake of being reductive: It, when speaking of the vocals, still ends up being ‘Vader-does-groove metal’ at face value in terms of tone and emotional resonance. The anger is never-changing and the vocals never dare anything beyond the tough guy “Grr grr!” stuff. As a child of the 90’s I have an undeniable weakness for this kind of muscular, aggressive groove metal riffing. The abrasive death metal lean takes things to an impossibly heavy place that I find addictive. The more I listen the more the slower tracks like “Nothing Seems Right” get better; their grooves with tripped out guitar melodies eclipse many of their idols by the end of the record. It feels like a high mark in death/groove/deathcore’s effective simplicity.

‘With All Their Might’ is, as the cover art suggests, blasted out with the biggest metal hammer possible. It is guttural and ferocious without ever resorting to overly macho retardation. The track list flows in an incredible way. The arrangement starts as a wall of  chugging riffs and posturing but as things progress so does the variation in riff style. They aren’t flowing far from their core sound but the variations create a pleasantly shifting guitar experience. By the end of the album the final track is the payoff of a clever surge of melodic ideas and groove intensive death metal riffing. Dyscarnate is a hugely satisfying chunk of beef, I can’t stop consuming the fatty grooves despite how meat-headed the whole thing is.

Beefy goodness. 3.65/5.0