Cachexic - The Grotesque Has Found A New Home

Self Released 2012

1.A Tortorous War Of Nerves 2.Horror Trail

3.Psychological Scars Last For Life 4.Succumbing To Diseases

5.Raping The Earth

The first thing that hits you in the face is the production, bass heavy and powerful as fuck! No holding back here, straight from the opening notes Cachexic have one thing on their mind….to pummel you into submission. Opening up with ‘A Torturous War of Nerves’  there is a very thrashy sound to their music, sitting in the death/thrash genre quite comfortably. When the track slows down there’s a real groove to the band’s sound although they do sound gruesome here, reminiscent of Autopsy in places, dragging you down into a filth ridden mire. This opening track ends extremely slowly and this is when the band is at their best, crawling and dragging the song to its grime filled and rotten conclusion. ‘Horror Trail’ opens up with a blistering pace, opting for a more defined Death metal sound. The pace is then dropped into more mid-paced territory and being brutally honest, the track passes by without any great innovation, nothing that really grabs your attention unfortunately.

‘Psychological Scars Last For Life’ is a confused song, it doesn’t really know what genre to sit in, changing from a very thrash orientated approached, especially the vocals which become almost shouted, to a very heavy and extreme form of death metal, the dual vocals a real highlight here. ‘Succumbing To Diseases’ sees the band adopting an altogether different approach, taking on a ‘Grindcore’ sound which, is very different from the previous tracks and is probably the best track so far, raging blast beats and mixed with punkier riffing which is quite a standard grind recipe, but works well here. Bonus track ‘Raping The Earth’ again adopts a punk ethic, raging along nicely with Mark’s vocals especially scathing and spitting out venom. A good short, sharp way to end this, their fourth e.p.

Summing up, ‘The Grotesque Has Found A New Home’ is a strange beast. All very well played, however the band seem to be confused as to which genre to sit in. Instead of mixing influences, each track appears to point in a different direction to the others. One song sounding thrash orientated, the next taking on the heavier death metal approach with the next sounding very Grindcore and then ending with some punk sounding songs. Mixing all of these influences into every song would have surely given the tracks a more coherent and connected sound. A worthy effort, but maybe Cachexic need to decide what brand of extreme metal they want to adopt because I’m sure that if they put their minds to it and have a mix of all their influences in every track they will be more than capable of producing a top notch e.p!

6.5 out of 10