Tracks
1. The Knife
2. United
3. Carnival is Forever
4. Homo Sum
5. 404
6. A View from a Hole
7. Pest
8. Silence

Band:
Rafał "Rasta" Piotrowski – vocals
Wacław "Vogg" Kiełtyka – guitars
Filip "Heinrich" Hałucha – bass
Kerim "Krimh" Lechner – drums

Discography:
Winds of Creation (2000)
Nihility (2002)
The Negation (2004)
Organic Hallucinosis (2006)

Guests:
Bartosz Hervy – guest keyboards

Info
Jarosław Szubrycht – lyrics
Daniel Bergstrand – mix, drum production
Arkadiusz "Malta" Malczewski– engineer
Rickard Sporrong – mastering
Łukasz Jaszak – cover, design, photos
Wojciech Kiełtyka – consultant, lyric revision
Wacław "Vogg" Kiełtyka –producer

Released 12/7-2011
Reviewed 26/7-2011

Links:
decapitatedband.net
myspace
nuclear blast

In 2007 a sad tragedy came upon the polish band of Decaptited who fell victim to a traffic accident which led to the tragic passing of drummer Witold "Vitek" Kiełtyka and also saw singer Adrian "Covan" Kowanek fall into a coma, he is only now starting to recover from what I have read when researching this album. Predictably this led to the band having a hiatus but in the end the only remaining member guitarist called Vogg decided to reform the band with new members and the result is the album called Carnival is Forever. I am really with the band in their tragedy, the loss of a brother, a friend or whatever it may be, it is sad. At the same time life goes on and now a new album has been at my table to review for a while and to be honest I had no idea about anything regarding this band when I took up this album for reviewing and my rating as well as most of how to base my judgement was already set before starting to research the album which is why I have left no chance for this event to influence my review since it is in the end the music it is all about. It has no bearing how an album is conceived or events around it if it is an awful album, events in conjunction to an album does not make them better or worse than they are, sure it can influence the album but that is all.

So what about Decapitated? The band name is a clear indication of what to expect and then look at the band logo if you need more, you all know what I am talking about. They are described as a technical death metal band which usually does not mean anything when compared to a non-technical death metal band. In this case however there is more than just doing one fewer blastbeat before the chorus that makes it technical I suppose as there are parts where the tempo fades and the heaviness as well creating vast pauses in between the speedy riffing, furious drumming and crazy growling. The production is modern with a clean sound making it sound more than your everyday basement death metal production. It is still on the more extreme side of the metal spectrum, no doubt about that. 42 minutes is how long it will take you to play it once and in doing so you pass through eight tracks.

To begin I should say that I am no real fan of this kind of music, the one with horrible diseases or violent events as band names. I am quite sure decapitation is no fun and to be fair their music is not that much fun either. Sure it is okay, they do have more melodies and something more interesting than your every day extreme metal band but in the end the result always feel the same, blastbeats, furious riffing and screaming, all ending in a racket of noise. Sure as I said, Decapitated are somewhat better and I think this album is alright but for someone not really into the darker back alleys of metal it will not do anything. For you who walk the darker alleys of the genre it would seem to be very good as the reviews have been almost exclusively good or excellent which I suppose would have nothing to do with what happened those few years ago. The ratings however are so good that even if some extra was added influenced by tragic events it sure seem to be a good extreme album anyway.

So, for you who are into this kind of music I think this will work just fine, for the rest of us it is really not that interesting, no matter the history behind it.

HHHHHHH

Label: Nuclear Blast
Three similar bands: Vader/Dies Irae/Meshuggah
Rating: HHHHHHH
Reviewer: Daniel Källmalm