Car Bomb

Mordial

BY Joe Smith-EngelhardtPublished Sep 27, 2019

8
Mathcore heavyweights Car Bomb amazed people with their third album, Meta, and became a household name within the genre, but topping that record is a hefty challenge. The band came back with a strong effort of Meshuggah-meets-Dillinger styled chaos on Mordial, and although it doesn't quite match up to their last record, it's sickeningly heavy.
 
The band pull off some of the strongest combinations of death metal and djent while intertwining spacey melodies throughout. Much like European noise makers Frontierer, Car Bomb frequently employ robotic scaling glitches of noise with their drop-tuned grooves to great success on songs like "Scattered Sprites" or "Fade Out," but this album proves that less is more. While these sounds are being expanded on from their past material, rather than being a newfound addition to their sonic assault, the band get a bit too indulgent with these sounds at times, such as "Dissect Yourself," where it just becomes grating on your ears.
 
Across the album they use polyrhythmic riffs and breakdowns to great success showing djent can be more than just the fad it became a few years ago. "HeLa" delivers more straightforward beatdown riffs without jarring noise blips while "Xoxoy" has some incredibly powerful tribal-esque breakdowns. The band flip tempos at the drop of a dime during the majority of the songs, which only serves to boost their already unnerving sound.
 
Although there are minor things to nitpick with Mordial, the record is a devastating show of death metal-leaning mathcore. Few bands have quite as violent a sound as Car Bomb, and Mordial is another finely crafted album to tack on their discography.
(Independent)

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