Cephalectomy has been around for awhile now. This Canadian band formed in 1997 and plays a brand of brutal death/grind with a drum machine. They’ve released two albums prior to The Dream Cycle Mythos and they are both quite well regarded in the whole death/grind scene. Now admittedly, I’m not much of a fan of this whole death grind with a drum machine and guttural vocals style, especially when it also involves the word “technical.” Still, I am a huge fan of death metal and grind core and the reason I got hold of this is simply because The Dream Cycle Mythos is one 23 minute death grind song. I had to listen to this.

The album gets off to a pretty shaky start. A breakdown with those guttural processed vocals starts proceedings till the drum machine explodes and it’s just a blur of chaotic noise. I suppose the technical aspect comes in simply because the band change riffs at the drop of the hat. There isn’t too much thought given to transition. For example, the music goes from your quasi-Swedish death riff to the kind of guitar abuse that you can find in a Sugar Plum Fairy recording in the blink of an eye and it jars big time. At around about the 4 minute mark, the guitarists hit a speeded up version of what sounds like a Lamb of God riff and I have to say, this was where the confusion started for me.

While the idea of an epic length death grind song sounds intriguing the reality is another story. The band throws in as many different styles of extreme metal as they can and the end result is quite frankly, a mess. There are some good riffs in the song. Unfortunately, it gets buried in huge mountains of crappy death grind riffing and one of the most irritating drum machine and vocal sounds in a long time. About half way into the song, The Dream Cycle Mythos stops being a song or a piece of music and starts becoming an endurance test. Also, simply increasing the tempo and playing clichéd Swedish death riffs won’t turn it into death grind.

At the end of the day, The Dream Cycle Mythos is a pretty interesting idea on paper but in reality is an unqualified mess.



Label - Discorporate Music
Year - 2008