CRANIAL ENGORGEMENT are one of my favorite bands in the genre, despite not being too well known. The band have been active since 2007, although their debut demo tape "Prelude to Horror" only got a release date in 2014, and now, three years later, the band has finally unleashed their long-awaited, debut, full-length album! "Horrific Existence" is the name of the album, released through Gore House Productions (a pretty good extreme Metal label that mostly releases stuff similar to CRANIAL ENGORGEMENT). The album came out on February 10^th, 2017.

Surprisingly, after such a long time of inactivity, this album seems to have eleven songs, which is a pretty good thing. Let's start with the first one. "Prelude to Horror" - which has the same name as their previous demo - is an intro track that gives you the creeps. "Dawn of the Final Day" enters with absolute rawness - and I truly mean this. The vocals are extra "crispy", brutal and raw, and the drums are completely distorted. Everything is bit monotonous in the first few seconds, but later the rhythms add up to each other, creating an explosive atmosphere of pure destruction. The bass is super sharp, the vocals are quite brutal, and the guitars are good too, although they seem to have been toned down a bit in the mix, but just a bit. One thing that is simply amazing on this is the bass! Believe it or not, I honestly hear it being louder than the actual guitars, which is a super cool thing. "Conceived into the Suffering" gives you the complete feeling of this album's atmosphere. The art, the music - everything is made to be scary and evil as hell. The vocals have two variations here: one is more of an un-understandable, really low growl, whilst the one is more like a more modern-oriented, somewhat understandable vocal type.

Overall, this album is majestic, strong and full of slamming energy. Give it a spin!