Two years have passed since Cephalectomy released their Dark Waters Rise demo, a recording I openly admit to disliking, and I was extremely hesitant to even give the CD a listen. In fact the CD remained unopened on my desk for nearly two weeks before I finally decided "what the hell" and gave it a listen. I remember when I last listened to their 1998 demo I was filled with thoughts of "this band should never be signed, they’re horrible", and was actually extremely disappointed to find out they had been signed by the little known Nova Scotia label Discorporate Music. Well, it seems that in those two years the band has once again improved dramatically and grown into their sound and, much to my surprise, sound like well-polished veterans, even more surprising to me was the fact that I liked what I heard, and I liked it a lot. It’s amazing what a difference 18 months can make, and in the time it took to create their label debut, they seem to have improved in every aspect I had once been highly critical of. The drumming is faster and played with more authority and skill than ever before, the riffs and rhythms are far better and more entertaining than ever before and the double vocal approach has been refined to the point where I not only find them to be bearable, but totally get into them, the sickeningly deep and guttural lows especially. To say I am impressed with their improvement is an understatement. Their new tunes stick out over their previous work like Ron Jeremy’s tool of the trade on a midget. The music is reminiscent of early Kataklysm in it’s passionate aggression and chaotic approach, mixed with the rhythm of Swedish death metal (which was an obvious influence in Kataklysm’s early days as well) and brutality of European grind. Of course the band does lose points for ass-kissing after adding me to the thanks list, even though months ago I did make both Jason and Corey cry due to comments made about Dark Waters Rise, and this was an obvious attempt to butter me up, but, on the other hand I am a cheap whore and am always overjoyed to see my name in a thanks list and have people spell "Teufel" properly. On that note, for the life of me, I still cannot understand why so many misspell it as "Tuefel", how are these people even able to find my website if they cannot even spell the first six letters of the domain name properly? Fucking whores. Anyway, that has nothing to do with this review, what does have to do with this review is that over the course of the past 5 years I have listened as these two grew from a simple death-thrash garage band to a full-fledged complex entity now worthy of the title "True Northern Mystigrind" and of the contract they signed to Discorporate. I’m glad to have been able to hear this band’s progression from their very beginnings to where they’ve gotten to today through hard work and dedication, and look forward to hearing where the future takes their music next. Now that I have given both Jason and Corey their praise, could they please pull the knife away from my dog’s throat and pull the gun away from my temple and kindly fuck off?

Written By: Teufel