The guitar tones still have a lot of that American OSDM thrashiness to them, and although they have every right as a veteran band to jump into the currently popular OSDM flood, they’ve decided to lean a lot more towards a modern death metal execution instead. This is a good balance of pace that retains the flame for the entirety of the record. So not only is Erik an accomplished death metal musician in his own right, but his entry to the band was seamless as he had already been working on their sound on the production end.īoth the death and the grind aspect of the band are presented well across this album, often alternating between longer death metal tracks where the buzzing occasionally slows to a hectic groove like in “Inhumane Harvest” and shorter faster grind tracks like “Overtorture” which will absolutely smash your shit for two minutes before ending so abruptly that it’s disorientating. In my recent (not yet uploaded) interview with Alex Webster who plays bass in CC, he talked about how Erik had produced the last handful of albums.
I’m not saying that one is necessarily better than the other but that having a brand-new songwriting member for the first time since 1997 did wonders to rejuvenate everyone. Unimagined Violence has benefitted greatly from having a new band member with Erik Rutan ( Hate Eternal, Morbid Angel) taking over lead guitar for ex-member Pat O’Brien. I’ve listened to the album multiple times under both mindsets, and it goes off regardless.
It’s still dark and brutal enough to feed seething energy into your angry bones. At least this is what I hear a lot of the time – when I’m in a good mood. I believe Violence Unimagined achieves this while also utilizing a higher production budget. Not a so-bad-its-funny kind but more of a brilliant movie confined by budget alone and thus being surreally twisted and charming at the same time. This feels like a more playful Cannibal Corpse, coming a little closer to Cannabis Corpse in terms of self-awareness and ultimately harmless B-grade horror movie aesthetic.
I can’t quite put my finger on it, whether there’s been major production changes or something like that, but this one really popped out musically and lyrically in a way that suggests the OG CC is very much still in operation. It sounds distinct and energized when compared to other modern releases from the band. It doesn’t try too hard to portray “hardness”, rather maturing towards expressing creativity through these horrific short stories. It touches on that same kinda cheesy and catchy, but also brutal and punishing death metal that Bloodthirst provided for me. Violence Unimagined is the first modern Cannibal Corpse album to truly pull my ear on the first listen and urge me on for many replays.
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