The first thing you need to know about Australia's CARCINOID is that they are not here to hold your fucking hands. They're here to pummel you in the gut and kick you in the balls, and their new EP, released on Me Saco Un Ojo records, "Encomium to Extinction" does just that.  Mixing an unholy pairing of bass-heavy doom and straight up death metal, the five gentlemen from down under have come to sodomize your earholes with a slab of ugly, crust-filled screams from Satan's STD-infested groin.  Carefully controlled (their artwork from the first demo in 2018 until this latest release consists of brilliant black-and-white images inspired by early '80s hardcore and thrash), the Aussie band has thrown together five songs in just under thirty minutes that are meant to reduce the listener to a mere shit-stained streak on the killing floor.

"Encomium to Extinction" pretty much sums up everything the band does well, and they're pretty consistent with this across the half-hour.  Vocalist Abhi will alternate between guttural growls to head-felt screeches at the drop of a dime, sometimes layering both at the same time.  This tends to break up the monotony at times and is in keeping with the band's tendency to go from brutally fast death metal riffs to slow, dirgy doom-inspired heaviness.  Jess's bass is an over-driven mess, four strings that get lost in the buzz-like saw of Az and Nathan's dual attack.  Harmonized melodies over Abhi's screams further help differentiate the song into pockets of fatal jabs and uppercuts.  "Mired in Decay" leans to the doom side of things, a slow death of external evisceration, as if the band won't be pleased with their job until they've literally turned the corpse inside out. The structure and mix of the song is similar to "Encomuium to Extinction," with a few guitar squeals thrown in there for not-so-good measure.  Michael's drums propel the song forward with a punk rock fury, even through the more doomy parts, as Abhi continues his unholy howling.

As competent as the band is in encapsulating what's intriguing about the slow, deliberate pain of doom and the gory fun of death metal, the songs seem stuck in the same gear. And while that might be fifth as they fly down the Great Northern Highway, it seems it might benefit the guys from just throwing the truck into neutral to see what happens as they hit the descent.  There's some interesting stuff on the album-"Morbid Curse" flirts with a major-key groove at some points- but for the most part, CARCINOID sticks to what they know and doesn't take risks.  In a world where metal seems to be the last man standing in terms of guitar-oriented music, the band owes it to themselves and their listeners to take the wrong turn, while keeping those maniacal sneers of evil plastered across their faces.