I’m an idiot. I admit it. When Cephalic Carnage first made their way on the scene I completely ignored them due to their promotion of weed. That was my only reason for not listening to them; because they were stoners singing about weed which just seemed retarded to me. Not a very good reason to dislike a band, I know. It wasn’t until the releases of Lucid Interval and Halls Of Amenti that I finally took notice and realized "Holy shit! Cephalic Carnage are fucking rad!"

In 2005 Cephalic Carnage released their last album Anomalies, and while I loved all of the earlier material, I just couldn’t keep Anomalies in my stereo for very long. Something was just… different about the music, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. By no means was it a bad release, but it did make me a little less eager to check out their 2007 offering Xenosapien.

Having purchased and listened to the album several times I hate to admit that I feel very similarly towards this effort as I did towards Anomalies. Xenosapien, like Anomalies, is a more mature effort than the earlier and more chaotic material of Conforming To Abnormality and Lucid Interval. More thought has been put into song structures and writing actual songs, rather than just getting fried and grinding away. That’s not to say there aren’t some killer grind moments, the album is filled with them, but there’s a greater inclusion of other influences.

Xenosapien definitely sounds like a Cephalic Carnage album, it has all of the insane grinding elements, weird experimental vibe and fucked up song structures everyone has come to expect, and is another step towards "musical maturity" from Anomalies. Call me childish, but I have to admit I was a huge fan of the chaotic earlier material that just seemed to have no structure or thought behind it and sounded like songs were being written on the fly in the studio and these past two efforts just lack that element that got me hooked to begin with.

If you love Anomalies and have listened to it a million times, you’ll be completely stoked by this latest release. To be honest, I just can’t get into it and believe me, I’ve tried and I think that’s the problem right there. If an album doesn’t immediately grab my attention no amount of listens is going to make me suddenly like it. I think I’m going to put this one back on the shelf and try giving it another spin a few months from now and hopefully I’ll feel differently. Or maybe I’ll just feel differently after lighting a blunt the size of my forearm.

Review byTeufel