Rating: 7.5

Country: Australia

Release Date: 2006

Record Label: Life Fluid

Track list:
1. Autocratic Annihilation
2. The Cyanide God
3. Churning Seas of Lava
4. Dogmatic Upheaval
5. The Face of Fear [mp3]
6. Industrial Manslaughter
7. Molesting the Earth
8. Like Fools Praying to a Dead God

Band Website: Excarnated

Excarnated - Purging The Earth

Chris Newell - Vocals
Rodney Keil - Guitars
Nick Warren - Bass
Matt Bell - Drums

Some bands like some hapless people are plain ugly. You can't do anything to help it; they are just ugly. At first Excarnated seemed to me like one of those bands. Although they sounded like my kind of band, I just couldn't look past its prominent layer of fuzzy inflammation. I tried quite a few times but still I couldn't get myself to acknowledge its intrinsic beauty. It was frustrating. So I went and got myself hypnotised by a guru. And then like in the movie Shallow Hal, I began to see beyond the repulsive ugliness of Excarnated, and a copious number of subsequent spins ensured that my attitude remained the same even after a cat broke the spell by mutilating my face and rendering me ugly.

Excarnated play raw and grotesque old school death metal, with a sound so heavy and cumbersome that you feel you ought to be given a medal upon enduring the whole of it. Knowing that they aren't clones and that their music doesn't sound completely derivative is a huge bonus, though even then they are far from original. It's actually a heterogeneous mixture of bands such as Incantation, Grave, Funerus, Corpse Molestation and Rottrevore. Their songs, while bearing closest resemblance to Funerus, are gratifyingly long and structured. The Incantation influence is more pronounced in Excarnated's case but it is not as morbid and diabolic as the original Incantation. Instead, their music has a sense of post-apocalyptic desolation and a kind of hollowness to it that is akin to the Cianide albums - Death, Doom and Destruction and The Dying Truth respectively. At the same time it has a crude, rudimentary vibe of ancient Swedish bands like Carnage and Nihilist. Taking all that into account, it is interesting to note that Excarnated's music is not as impassive as one would think. Somehow they are able to emote even through this music, mostly their feelings of hate and resentment stemming from the fact of how they once used to be normal but have now turned into hideous monsters, which made their girlfriends dump them. Their imploring leads in particular provide a sharp contrast to their overall boorish character.

The production is definitely not the friendliest I've heard; while I understand the significance of it being raw and ugly, they must cut down on the fuzz factor, and while they are at it add some juice to it – man, this is as desiccated as cinder. The vocals are similar to the ones blown by Craig Pillard, permeating your room through the speakers like some nerve gas, completely overwhelming and incapacitating you. The occasional anguished rasps are reminiscent of the ones by Intestine Baalism. Without these miasmic vocals, the music would surely fall flat. Skillful drumming also helps their case. Boy, it's sure good to hear un-triggered drums for a change. It actually sounds like a really fat girl doing exercises in the room above yours – running around during the drum rolls and spot jogging during the double bass parts. For a moment there I explored the unsavoury possibility of the ceiling caving in with her landing on top of you, which I thought would be like a plump frog falling on a fly.

The Purging The Earth experience is like being run down by your senile, weak-sighted grandma and having your body stuck below her car. This way you are forced to undergo phenomenal physical damage with your dragged body generally scraping against the concrete road and during the special moments, scraping along the potholes and the speed breakers. Considering grandma's behind the wheel, the speed ranges from slow to moderate, but sometimes it can also get fast – depending on the desperation of the honking by the other cars. Black exhaust emitted intermittently from her car as well as the vehicles surrounding it, especially at signals, would serve as the equivalent of the Craig Pillard-esque vocals. Well, as far as I know, only a hardened old school death metal fanatic could endure this 40-minute long enervating experience and crawl out alive, quite surely with a crooked smile on his blackened face if it comes to that.

October 23rd, 2006