2023’s Visions of Infinihility landed in my lap via a Slack message from AMG Himself, and what a gift it was. Carnosus’s rollicking slab of tech death appealed to a broad swath of staff and readers. The Swedish quintet’s sophomore full-length took a star turn come Listurnalia, capturing the fourth slot on the staff’s aggregated top ten, the second spot on my own, and a full-throated endorsement from Angry Metal Guy as his Record o’the Year. Carnosus pulled this off while releasing their own material. The whole love affair was an example of what I’ve always seen as the site’s best function: the ability to connect talented bands on the margins of the machine with an audience.1 When the party ended, Carnosus woke up in bed beside Willowtip Records. Here they are, all grown up now and pregnant with their third album Wormtales. Can these exuberant Swedes steal our hearts again, or is it all best left back in the sticky mists of 2023?
Carnosus bills Wormtales as a “prequel” to Visions of Infinihility. The affectation makes sense, since Wormtales plays like a step on the way to the triumph that was its predecessor. The ingredients are the same: a bedrock layer of thrash-derived riffing in the vein of Revocation, atop which melodies skitter and twist. The new album forgoes some of the technical brio of VoI and leans hard into band’s affinity for melodeath and thrash. It’s darker, meaner, and less immediately appealing. Still, the act’s strengths remain intact. Here you’ll find dazzling and ever-evolving guitar solos that cast shimmering reflections on the songs they adorn. Jonatan Karasiak remains the most distinctive vocalist in extreme metal. This is a record that draws you in over time instead of kicking your doors down–but with repeated listens, Wormtales writhes out of the shadows and demands to be appreciated on its own terms.
The Carnosus of Wormtales plays with a nasty edge that’s missing from their previous work. There’s a new level of intensity to tracks like”Harbinger of Woundism,” and “Cosmoclaustrum.” The poison guitar tone on “Paradoxical Impulse” and “Within Throat, Within Heart” descends from so-called cavern-core acts like Chthe’ilist or Grave Miasma, even as the band keeps the tempo cranking. The solos of Rickard Persson and Markus Jokela Nyström intersect with the compositions in inventive and satisfying ways. You might prefer the scampering madlads of the act’s earlier work–it’s definitely what fans of Carnosus are used to, and it doesn’t help Wormtales that its ten songs are the least memorable set the band has dropped. Nothing jumps out as a future playlist staple here. This one’s all about breaking teeth and gouging eyeballs, and then relieving your pain with flashes of melody and skill.
Wormtales reveals Carnosus to be a band determined to interrogate their own shtick instead of just repeating what worked before. They are still operating the same contraption here, they just pull the levers in a new order and solder different wires together to make new connections. You can see this urge to tinker when they flirt with death-doom on closer “Solace in Soil,” or when vocalist Karasiak reaches into his Bag of Infinite Tricks to drop a slam-influenced squeal into “Within Throat, Within Heart.” You can see it in the improved production that drenches the long player in a distorted low end. Carnosus’s restless spirit should bode well for their longevity, even if the version of their sound that emerges on Wormtales can’t quite scale the same heights they did before.
It’s hard to be the younger sibling of the valedictorian, just as I’m sure it’s hard to follow a tour de force like Visions of Infinihility. Carnosus got on with it, releasing Wormtales eighteen months after its esteemed older brother. The new album might be an operating system that lacks a killer app in the form of an undeniable song–but it’s still a forceful and coherent statement that I suspect will stand the test of time. If you were aboard the delirious party express that was VoI, give this one a chance to take you on a journey of its own.
Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Willowtip Records
Websites: carnosus.bandcamp.com | carnosus.com
Releases Worldwide: October 18, 2024
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