{"id":69549,"date":"2018-05-04T00:00:37","date_gmt":"2018-05-04T00:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/?p=69549"},"modified":"2018-06-03T14:15:06","modified_gmt":"2018-06-03T14:15:06","slug":"album-review-lik-carnage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/album-review-lik-carnage\/","title":{"rendered":"LIK – Carnage (2018) | Album \/ EP Reviews @ Metal Forces Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"

LIK
Carnage<\/strong><\/span>
\n\"\"
\nMetal Blade (2018)<\/span>
Rating: 8\/10<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Straight up death metal – it doesn\u2019t get much clearer than that. But is it any good? Let me put it to you this way, the first song, \u2018To Kill\u2019, hits you with an old school Necrophobic \/ Brutality vibe so strong it feels like someone picked up a shovel and knocked you in the side of your head with it. And then they jump back in the saddle and take another swing at you with their second song, \u2018Rid You Of Your Flesh\u2019. And it\u2019s like that through the entire record.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re wondering who this band is or even what their name means, well, Lik means \u201ccorpse\u201d in Swedish and sure enough the band hails from Sweden. They have been around since 2014 and have now released two records, their first being 2015\u2019s Mass Funeral Evocation<\/em>.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a very cool rawness to this disc which more than likely is attributed to the fact that the band likes to record as close to live as possible, with very little editing as well. Musically, Lik sports a no frills, classic death metal sound which they\u2019ve nailed to a tee.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re looking for texture and layer and maybe different dimensions or different sides of the band to be displayed, it doesn\u2019t happen. And that\u2019s good. Lik are extremely good at what they do which is toy with a sound and heaviness that veers between Hellhammer \/ Celtic Frost and Broken Hope \/ Carcass, just to name a few. And don\u2019t forget the Swedish death metal influence either. That runs through this record like embalming fluid through a tube.<\/p>\n

Song subject matter is pretty standard fare \u2013 death, horror, cannibalism, etc. Go back and listen to Mass Funeral Evocation<\/em>, as Carnage<\/em> is simply an extension of that record. Normally I\u2019d rail against a band that doesn\u2019t show much progression or dimensionality to either their songwriting or their music, but with Lik I don\u2019t want them to change; I like who they are and how they sound. I\u2019ll take classic death metal any day over a lot of the nonsense that\u2019s trying to get passed off as death metal now. It just doesn\u2019t work for me.<\/p>\n

Making good death metal is very much like writing a good horror novel or scripting a solid horror movie. Either you have the skills to do it, or you don\u2019t and it shows. Lik kills it, and standout songs include \u2018Death Cult\u2019, \u2018Celebration Of The Twisted\u2019, and \u2018Cannibalistic Infancy\u2019.<\/p>\n

Lik isn\u2019t reinventing the wheel here, they\u2019re just making sure that their wheel is sick enough and strong enough to roll over the competition and crush it, which they certainly do with their second record. You really need to check Carnage<\/em> out. It\u2019s a record that will make ya bleed.<\/p>\n

Theron Moore<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LIKCarnage Metal Blade (2018)Rating: 8\/10 Straight up death metal – it doesn\u2019t get much clearer than that. But is it any good? Let me put it to you this way, the first song, \u2018To Kill\u2019, hits you with an old school Necrophobic \/ Brutality vibe so strong it feels like someone picked up a shovel […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,3997],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-album-ep-reviews","category-lik"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69549"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69551,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69549\/revisions\/69551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}