CRIMINAL - "CANCER" (METAL BLADE)
CRIMINAL - "CANCER" (METAL BLADE)
Criminal are back with a follow-up to "Dead Soul", intending to be the next band (after Sepultura) out of South America to make it big.
I am not sure if they got what it takes. Half of a the tracks on the album are too average. It starts off OK with the title track, then even better with the riff-driven, heavy, thumping "Force Fed". "Green" is a pretty laid-back kind of song with some tribal rhythms added, and "Above and Beyond" is a bit like Machinehead. One of the remaining songs is below avarage, "El Azote" is a fast track, in Spanish, missing everything I'd like to have in a metal track.
One of the problems with the band is that their drummers seems to have two main speeds, 120 and 240 bpm. He doesn't stray from these steady rhythms often, and I do tend to appreciate freaky drummers.
Bonus track is a live cover of Napalm Death's "Greed Killing", quite well done. There's also a multimedia section with bio, pictures and five video clips. Very well done, I have to say, I wish all multimedia sections were as capable executed as this one.
As a whole, however, "Cancer" is a well-produced album that, like its predecessor, adds little to what is already around.
RK
Written August 2001