Wisconsin's Casket Robbery are back at it again with another taste of melodic groovy death slop that's recommended for fans of Jungle Rot, Gojira and Pantera. But I'm hearing other acts in there, like Australia's Eight Foot Sativa and even Walking Corpse Syndrome, who you already know are one of my favorites. The record features a guest solo from John Laux of Warbringer as well as a guest speaking role from horror filmmaker Cory Udler (who I'm oddly not aware of for some reason, even though I'm very particular about my horror films after having seen so many sub-par efforts that didn't manage to come off either funny or scary). In any case, the disc delivers as far as I'm concerned and I was quite happy with it the first time I heard it. There are many times where I'd more or less consider myself “The Groove Lord” and this is just the kind of album where that proves to be true. You're not getting a very long record, but you're getting a very thick one, which also contains slight instances of technicality, or what some might also call song structure. These guys just don't load the album with grooves, and due to the know-how of Cory Scheider (Luna Mortis, Epicurean, Echoterra) you're actually hearing some memorable leads in each song. I also like that while all of the songs still carry the same groove mentality, they don't all sound the same. As a matter of fact, these guys seem to pride themselves on every song sounding different from the rest, which I think is a good attitude to have. Grunts are being carried out Dustin Foesch still, who proves his mettle on tracks like “Undead Living Hell” and the amazingly badass “Curse Of The Nightstalker” which are just some examples of this formula done right. As I said, there's a little bit of technicality in the riffs and you might hear some of Atheist/Gorguts/Cynic influence, but that's the not the whole of this. I'm getting a real old sense of death metal here, like you'd expect with Grave, Entombed, Bloodbath and Revolting. There's actually more than a few creepy riffs to be had within this mixture and that's something I really look forward to. Sure, play around with all the technical wizzums you want, but make it sound evil. It is death metal after all. That being said, I think some of the heads expecting a pure old school style might be turned off a bit. But to them I'd say, give it a chance anyway. While it's definitely a more modern approach, I'm still hearing what I know to be death metal and that's more than enough for me to recommend it. It actually feels like a gateway drug to those old cemetery slabs some of you have sitting on your shelves (or in constant rotation) right now. The kids could be listening to far worse shit than this as far as I'm concerned and I truly embrace this kind of experimenting. It keeps our genre fresh and accessible. If you don't like accessible records, that's fine. There's plenty of other shit out there that you'll find intriguing. But if you don't mind seeing an old dog learn some new tricks, check out Casket Robbery. I could play this thing ten times right now and not get tired of it, but you might if you're not a fan of all the grooves or modernisms I mentioned.
(10 Tracks, 36:00)
9/10
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