Rating: 5.8

Country: Australia

Release Date: 2002

Record Label: Self Released

Track list:
1. The Lament Configuration
2. Crimson Ecstasy
3. Beyond Mortal Relapse
4. Torso Fucker
5. The Trophy Hunter
6. Autistic Dementia
7. Bleached Bodies
8. Homicidal Decimation
9. Aristocratic Depravity
10. Total Bloodshed

Band Website: Excarnated

Excarnated - Homicidal Decimation

Chris - Vocals, Programming
Craig - Bass, Guitar

It is not often that I review a release that precedes the latest one of a band that I have already reviewed. This is because I am not the kind of guy who looks back and which explains why I bang into so many pedestrians and vehicles while reversing the car. To tell you the truth, I have been morally blackmailed into reviewing Homicidal Decimation, the debut album of a band I have gotten so familiar with that its innumerable members have become like a family to me. These days anyone from Australia comes and stays over at my place. I blame it all on my tryst with their second album Purging The Earth, which is so obnoxiously heavy and abrasive that its mere thought makes my skin peel instinctively. The primary difference between the two albums is that listening to Purging The Earth was more than just listening to music; it was an experience unto itself. More importantly, enduring that album gave its listeners a rare sense of achievement in life.

Excarnated on Homicidal Decimation is like an actor who had impersonated different stars he had idolised before he finally found his own crude style. The death metal music on this album is unassuming and sincere, and completely derivative. Evidently, Excarnated were hugely inspired by Altars of Madness era Morbid Angel and Incantation circa Onward To Golgotha. Their reasonably well structured songs feature classic riffs of these two bands and are interspersed with slow agreeable chugging and cathartic drum machine blasting, both of them characteristics of Mortician. Occasionally, the songs exude an affable old school vibe akin to Unleashed felt most distinctly in “Beyond Mortal Relapse”. Excarnated do a rather decent job playing within their capabilites at this juncture, making sure there are strong moments in every song that would appeal to their listeners, for example - “Autistic Dementia” has a brilliant segue from early Morbid Angel riffing to a wicked blood pumping part accentuated by a couple of nasty rasps - the first one alerting you of it and the second longer one comes and goes, as if the vocalist were sitting on a merry-go-round while you were standing outside holding a mic. As I've come to expect from Chris, the vocals are indeed first rate – deep, resonating growls that are better defined here, and though they might be more varied in their delivery, they sound best during the expulsion of hoarse sounds from his inhuman body.

Homicidal Decimation has no real flaws per se; it is just that the music on it is terribly unoriginal, devoid of any distinctive quality that would make you want to get into an electrifying elbow fight with the people around you while scrambling for this cd. It ails from the same disease that plagued their counterpart Misery whose album Curses, in spite of being a solid one, was simply too unimaginative for you to hold it close to your ears for long. Were you to suddenly come face to face with Homicidal Decimation in a bargain bin of your local metal store or in a sale section of some site, I reckon you would do well to pick it up instead of your usual course of ignoring and playing cool.

August 20th, 2007