Mass Burial – Vomitory, Carnage Euphoria

The penultimate Vomitory album feels like, in some ways, a return to the early Vomitory albums: Carnage Euphoria takes a few songs to get going, as the fourth track “Ripe Cadavers” is the first one that really gets my attention. “A Lesson in Virulence” is a good third song, a usual Vomitory trait, but this time, it’s a slower tune that appears in that slot and that for whatever reason keeps the album from taking off. “Rage of Honor,” “Deadlock” and closer “Great Deceiver” are also quality tunes.

But Carnage Euphoria is missing something that the other Vomitory albums all possess. This album is not as interesting or catchy as the previous six are, and so, listen to it as I might, I just can’t find it as engaging as any of the previous albums. This is not to say that Carnage Euphoria is a bad listen, because it is not: five of the ten songs are real good entries in the catalog, as good as any others on other records. The production is a little bland, and so the songs don’t really pack the same punch as they do on previous efforts. I’d mentioned that the production on Primal Massacre was real thin and weak, but the songs on that album were better than what’s on here. Maybe there is fatigue setting in, having spent so much time listening to one band over and over for like two weeks now: maybe I’ve just hit my Vomitory wall. But that can’t be it, because I’ve listened to this album several times sandwiched between several listens of the preceding and following efforts, and both of those sound good and strong to my ears.

Something that has made this trip through their discography so satisfying has been the incredible and unshakable consistency with which the band has written death metal songs. I have repeatedly mentioned the catchiness and steady delivery album after album now, but there comes a time in most bands catalogs’ when you sit back and think, “Man, again.” And I think Carnage Euphoria, through no fault of its own, is that album for Vomitory. There is nothing wrong here, and this is absolutely not a case of a band trying or injecting something different into their mix that ends up compromising the product. For whatever reason, Carnage Euphoria is just not as good an album as their other output, and I feel bad not being able to provide any reason of substance to support that claim. This one leaves me feeling a little indifferent.