The More You Suffer

Back with their fourth album after only a short break, Carnal Forge weighs in here with another slab of speedy, no-frills thrash with melodic death metal overtones à la At the Gates or late-period Carcass (who once wrote a song entitled "Carnal Forge"). This band does not earn huge points for originality, as their native Sweden has become pretty much an assembly line for this sort of hardened, modern thrash since the late '90s (see also, in order of decreasing heaviness, the Crown, the Haunted, Terror 2000, Darkane, and Soilwork for just a few other examples). For the time being, though, they're off the hook, simply because of the execution — songwriting, performance, and production-wise — and the overall conciseness and consistency of their presentation. In addition, they have thankfully avoided watering their music down with either the lightweight symphonic melodies or the nu-metal/Machine Head/Pantera influences that some of their countrymen have chosen to incorporate. This is a sub-genre whose expiration date appears to be somewhere on the not-so-distant horizon as of this album's early-2003 release, but The More You Suffer is better than much of what's coming off this assembly line and should satisfy fans of the style.