When you’ve got a sophomore album nearly six years in the making, and it’s shorter than Reign In Blood, one of two things has happened; either you’ve decided to shit something out super-quick just to keep the band name out there, or you’ve (hopefully) spent that time honing these songs to the point that they’re less “songs” than blades and boulders, both concertina wire-sharp and heavy as granite.
Creepy-crawly “intro-not intro” ‘Precursor To Bloodshed’ sets the mood for Malignant Cognition, ARCHITECTURAL GENOCIDE ready to rumble like a bulldozer in the graveyard that is ‘Coercion Into Carnality’. Immensely guttural vocal spews of the DYING FETUS (before they sucked) variety, musically recalling Michigan’s MUTILATED of the “tune to Drop H and make it as Neandertal as possible” school. In this case, though, it’s an asset, as the brilliantly titled ‘Leave It To Cleaver’ swirls in the sewage, gut-shuddering bass notes jellying your innards before the interesting off-time drumming at the end does a number on your brainpan.
Early Corpsegrinder-era CANNIBAL CORPSE riffing and gurglings carry ‘Trophies For My Murders’, while a sound byte from The Iceman (2012) sets the tone for ‘Malicious Wager’, vocalist Daniel Brockaway’s glottal eruptions on a level approaching CIRCLE OF DEAD CHILDREN’s Joe Horvath. Not a pig squeal in sight throughout the album, which – given the era this takes me back to – is a bit of a letdown. C’mon, you guys are from Texas! Do better!
AG proceeds to do just that, the mindfuck of ‘Zed Requiem’ convoluting and convulsing, and easily the pinnacle of this offering, awash in pinch harmonics and down-tuned offal stirrings, taking this beast we adore called death metal and dragging it down to some of its basest elements; slow and pulverizing. Ending with the kneecap-shattering bruiser ‘Stuffed Under The Floorboards’, ARCHITECTURAL GENOCIDE has proven they’ve come to do business. Pointed, focused, and with a sound as big as the Lone Star State, Malignant Cognition does its business well.
Review By: Lord Randall
ARCHITECTURAL GENOCIDE
Malignant Cognition
Comatose Music