Sinister: The Carnage Ending (2012)

What's Better--The Music, or the Art?

Review by Metallattorney. He is the law.

In recent years Sinister's music has been somewhat outshined by their amazing and oftentimes brutal album covers. They put out a couple of terrific death metal albums in the early 1990's with some terrific artwork on the cover. But since then their music has been lacking something. One thing they have always managed to do is grab attention on the CD racks though. The music just has not been able to live up to the promise of the cover.

This year Sinister once again released an album with an eye-catching album cover. Unlike prior albums though, the music contained within is extremely impressive and powerful death metal. Sinister definitely has an old-school death metal sound, not at all surprising since the band has been around for a long time now. They have resisted the urge on this album to add more modern touches to their music, just letting it speak for itself. The result is an absolutely blistering and relentless death metal attack that shows that there is some life (death?) left in this old band. Seriously this thing will leave you gasping for air and with a broken neck. It is that good.


Sinister, like their countrymen in Asphyx, are propelled by some extremely powerful riffs. This is fully on display with this album. The riffs are like steamrollers, unstoppable and shockingly heavy. The sound of the album is crisp without sounding sterile. The result of this is that the riffs are emphasized that much stronger. The blunt-force trauma from the riffs is that much more serious. So yeah, the riffs are good. Just a little bit.

Beyond the guitars, everything just comes together to create as much of a cacophonous sound as possible. The drums drive things forward and are truly interesting. It is not often that I really notice the drums, unless they are really good or really bad. This time, they are really good. The vocals, which are not the most brutal in the death metal genre, nonetheless sound terrific with this music.

This album puts Sinister back on the map. They had been going with the flow for years. No longer.

THE VERDICT
I give this album 4 out of 5 stars



Buy The Carnage Ending