It’s been 10 years since Colorado-based stoners Cephalic Carnage released their Conforming To Abnormality debut on Headfucker Records. The album has long been out of print and, since Relapse love to re-issue material rather than release anything new, unique and original they decided to re-release Conforming To Abnormality completely remastered along with the material from Cephalic Carnage’s split with Anal Blast from 2002.

There are already two reviews for the original release of Conforming To Abnormality posted on the site. Initially, I agreed with both writers who basically claimed the album sucked and the band should quit smoking so much dope. Over the years I grew to become a fan of Cephalic Carnage, picked up a bootleg copy of Conforming To Abnormality and really enjoyed it. The material was just fucking insane grindcore. The band didn’t care about song structures or riffs, they were all about going against the grain and created pure chaos.

Despite being a bunch of weed-fueled lunatics who seemed to just be creating a bunch of noise, Conforming To Abnormality was actually a pretty complex release with the band playing grindcore using really bizarre time signatures. It was really just a sampling of the pure chaos the band would create in the future, it wasn’t the easiest thing to listen to, but the material contained within was fucked up enough to strike a chord with my odd musical tastes.

Needless to say I was intrigued by the prospect of a remastered version of the release so I picked it up on a whim. A lot of times I see a “remastered” sticker on a disc and the material contained within sounds almost identical to the original. That’s not the case with this album. The bass has been turned way up giving the material a much thicker sound. Everything from the guitars to the vocals sounds much more powerful, which is both good and bad. Lenzig’s vocals sound much deeper and more guttural, the guitar tone is much thicker which works for the slower segments but the faster grindier moments seem to have lost their initial impact with the meatier tone.

The material from the split with Anal Blast seems to have gotten a similar enhancement to the production, it’s not quite as noticeable since the original recording had a heavier sound to begin with, but there’s definitely a subtle tweak to the bass levels. The material itself is the same. If you haven’t heard it the songs are straight-forward grindcore, which is a departure from their full length efforts which tends to have a lot more use of odd time signatures and crazy song structures.

To be honest, this isn’t the best Cephalic Carnage material, but it’s still a solid slab of insanely brutal grindcore nevertheless. Fans who prefer the two most recent Cephalic Carnage releases Anomalies and Xenosapien likely won’t enjoy Conforming To Abnormality, but those of you who loved Exploiting Dysfunction and Lucid Interval will definitely want to pick up this re-issue. If you haven’t heard Cephalic Carnage before, I’d recommend starting with Lucid Interval and go forwards or backwards in their catalog from there.

Written By: Teufel