Review by Elijah on February 19, 2020.

Cranial Impalement, the debut album from the brutal death metal gods Disgorge. This is a pretty good start for the band. Raw, brutal, and heavy; literally just those 3 components are what makes this album what it is. This album necessarily isn't BAD, but it has so much space to make better.

The main problem I have with this album is that the last 4 tracks are taken from their 1995 demo and just thrown in the album. The demo songs aren't bad, the issue is that they're literally just placed in the album without any tweaks. Why couldn't they just re-record the demo tracks in the style of the first 4 new original songs? I really don't understand this. I get that they wanted it to be brutal and all; which it is, but come on, this is just lazy. They seriously couldn't just re-record the songs or maybe.... just write some new songs?. Nope. I really hate this. As I said before, the last 4 tracks (1995 Demo) aren't BAD, I just have an issue that they're put in this album to fill extra space. Nothing new, just laziness.

Aside from that, (being the only issue I have with this album); the first 4 tracks are great! This production is definitely something else. The guitars are heavy and perfect, pretty much as heavy as the bass. The bass is heavy, present, and hearable. This is some magnificent bass playing and production for an album being this raw. Most of the time in brutal death the bass is buried underneath all the other instruments, but on this album all the instruments work hand-in-hand. The guitars aren't overpowering the bass, you can hear both being played at the same time. The drumming is good as well too, the snare and bass drum are heavy and fit this album's sound perfectly. This album relies on bass (in general) for its core sound and feel, so the snare not being too tight or too loose is great. Solid heavy bass drum and perfect snare. This couldn't be better. Rawness and precision working together to produce the ultimate sound.

Matti Way's vocals are revolutionary here, he's obviously an influence on many vocalists these days. His style ranges all over the place, but his trademark sound is the burping "gurgle" guttural growl. He isn't too nasty nor too perfect, which makes him great. Having balanced vocals while still maintaining that raw nasty sound is great. God tier vocalist.

Aside from all the good parts, the drumming is kinda sloppy, now obviously as I said before (and we all know), this album is raw and also a debut, so perfection/accuracy isn't something to expect. But that doesn't excuse the fact that the drumming on this record isn't necessarily amazing, just a little sloppy and dragging, just needs a little work. The drumming doesn't really bother me, but the slight sloppy drum work is definitely noticeable.

So Cranial Impalement. A decent album. Good, but definitely not a favorite of mine. Pretty good but lacks greatness in some areas, the main focus being that half of the tracks are taken from a previous demo and included on this album. Seriously, if these last 4 songs were either re-recorded or completely new songs, I wouldn't really have an issue with this record. I wouldn't say this album is terrible, but it’s not really worth your time, go give their other albums the attention instead.

Rating: 7.2 out of 10