Cephalic Carnage

"I'm very anxious to see how people are going to receive Lucid Interval. I wonder if we're going to gain an audience or lose an audience," says Cephalic Carnage's bassist Jawsh. When Cephalic Carnage released their Relapse debut, Exploiting Dysfunction, it was a statement that much like what label-mates the Dillinger Escape Plan we're doing for the metallic hardcore scene, Cephalic Carnage we're capable and willing to do to the often floundering and stagnant world of death/grind. Still, even as genre-bending and extreme as Exploiting Dysfunction was, few could predict the twisted directions the unit would conquer with Lucid Interval. "There's no point too far for us," Jawsh says boldly. "I think eventually it probably will come to that point where someone will hip everybody to the fact that, 'these guys really aren't just death metal, and what are we doing listening to them?' That's one of the reasons I am apprehensive about the release of this album, because there are a lot of different elements on it that I think a lot of purists are going to disagree with." What the purists may take offence to is the way that Cephalic Carnage effortlessly and expertly runs the gambit of their extreme influences of hyper-grind, thrash and death metal, tossing in black metal segments, electronic segues, oppressive doom, unrelenting and uncountable stop-start parts, awe-inspiring technical acumen, Southern metal swing, jazz, flamenco guitar and the occasional surf-rock tangent without a second thought to genre continuity. And according to Jawsh, if it makes some people uncomfortable, that's the point. "We're getting close [to going too far], we're writing surf rock and country songs and mixing them with black metal, but there's no limit to how far we can go. We really pushed the boundaries on this one. We wanted to make ourselves uncomfortable and then get comfortable with it, but with the next album, we plan on pushing the boundaries even further."