Cerebral Bore - Maniacal Miscreation

Scotland’s biggest brutal death band, Cerebral Bore, has been on track to become one of the biggest new bands in the genre ever since the release of this album in 2010. Since then, they’ve headlined tours in both North America and Europe, performed at numerous huge festivals, and, most recently, had a spot on America’s biggest death metal tour of the year, Summer Slaughter 2012. The question whether these guys could be the new Pathology or not isn’t really one that I want to discuss until they get a second album out on the streets. But that aside, this album is without a doubt one of the best brutal death albums of 2010 along with Disentomb’s Sunken Chambers of Nephilim and Pathology’s Legacy of the Ancients.

This is one of those albums where the immense amount of brutality isn’t mostly caused by the type of guitar distortions or the careful work at the mixing board during the production process. I can actually hear that every member is putting 100% of purebred ENERGY into everything that they’re doing. I guess that although this isn’t one of the most brutal albums out there, it is definitely one of the most energetic. I was going to see them when they were supposed to have a spot on the 2012 tour that included Goatwhore, Hate Eternal, and Fallujah, but apparently their visas didn’t go through and they couldn’t even make it into the United States. Now that I had the long-awaited pleasure to see them on stage a couple of days ago at this year’s Summer Slaughter Tour, I now know that not only is there an intense amount of energy amongst the members on stage AND in their music, but they have the special talent of directing some of that energy into the crowd in front of them.

I will say that when it comes to this kind of music, the sound of the vocals can really have a huge impact not only on the overall sound of the music, but the brutality. Som’s inhales aren’t really deep like the Devourment vocalist, but they’re not TOO high pitched (most of the time) like the vocalist for Slaughterbox. Som’s vocals have more of a really guttural and wet mid-ranged sound than anything else. But what I respect the most about her style is that she has variety in the pitch, intensity, and sound of her vocals. After listening to her vocals very carefully for the duration of the album, I can point out about 10 fairly different sounds that she makes. Yeah, I like inhaled vocals and brutal death and grind, but there seems to be a problem in a lot of the vocalists where they only make one or two different sounds, which eventually gives of a monotone sound.

The bassist is my favorite member of the band. I can tell just by listening to and watching him that he learned how to play bass on a jazz theory. He knows how to tune the sound of his guitar to get the BEST sound out of his intense slapping. This is sort of like Evan Brewer from The Faceless; he plays with a definite jazz style, but an extremely technical and brutal jazz style (if that makes any fucking sense at ALL).

I know that making this reference has the ability to cause major controversy and pointless bitching, but I see Cerebral Bore as being the Attila of brutal death. For those of you that have no idea who Attila is, they’re a deathcore band that plays a style that’s not a really angry/brutal sound (i.e. Whitechapel, etc.), but more of an extremely energetic and fun sound. So if you take the energy and fun aspect out of that, place it in a brutal death atmosphere, put in inhaled vocals, max out the brutality, and practically break off the energy knob by turning it up, you’ll get the motherfuckers known as none other than Cerebral Bore.

My favorite song off the record is, hands down, 24 Year Party Dungeon. If you want a BRUTAL song that is literally OVERFLOWING with energy and hilarious lyrics, this is what you need. Cerebral Bore go to great lengths and do the math to figure out the formula in order to create what to many people (including me) is one of the most fun brutal death songs to listen to. Although this song is not only a perfect conclusion, but the pinnacle of the entire album, this entire fucking record is one of the strongest brutal death records I’ve heard in quite some time (which for me isn’t very long because I’m not even 18 years old yet). I would give Maniacal Miscreation 18/20 for being one of my favorite brutal death records ever.