Band:	Cannibal Corpse
Album:	A Skeletal Domain
Style:	Death metal
Release date:	September 16, 2014
A review by:	ScreamingSteelUS

01. High Velocity Impact Spatter
02. Sadistic Embodiment
03. Kill Or Become
04. A Skeletal Domain
05. Headlong Into Carnage
06. The Murderer's Pact
07. Funeral Cremation
08. Icepick Lobotomy
09. Vector Of Cruelty
10. Bloodstained Cement
11. Asphyxiate To Resuscitate
12. Hollowed Bodies

Ah, Cannibal Corpse. Back again with their familiar death metal embrace, heralded by some killer artwork. Let's dive in and see what lurks underneath the greasepaint.

A Skeletal Domain leads off with filler, an inadvisable tactic that primes the listener for a lukewarm experience. Where "Demented Aggression," "Priests Of Sodom," and "The Time To Kill Is Now" smartly introduced Torture, Evisceration Plague, and Kill, respectively, with memorable rhythms and riffs as powerful as a concrete baseball bat to the shins, A Skeletal Domain trots out in a wholly inoffensive manner. Cannibal Corpse really find their element halfway through "Kill Or Become," which ascends to a more lethal and appreciable plane of brutality at Corpsegrinder's first exhortations to "fire up the chainsaw."

The title track carries forward this new momentum for a few tracks until, as is the way of Cannibal Corpse, the songs start to slide back into the fog of generic pounding and snarling. While "The Murderer's Pact" and "Funeral Cremation" impress with their vicious aural assaults, the same cannot be said for tracks like "Bloodstained Cement" and "High Velocity Impact Splatter," which attempt to make waves with a bland bluntness.

A Skeletal Domain sounds very much like Torture Part II: Electric Boogaloo. Somehow, with the change in producers from Erik Rutan to Mark Lewis, the polished, sanded-down sound of Torture remains. It's not quite as complex or frantically riff-heavy as a lot of their previous albums, although Alex Webster as usual plugs away like a maniac at his bass underneath the streamlined chaos.

Perhaps not as strong as Torture, but very much of the same flavor, A Skeletal Domain takes its place next to the rest of Cannibal Corpse's discography as an inconsistent but overall worthwhile release. You can always count on Cannibal Corpse for some strong, solid death metal. It might not blow you away, but at least tracks like "Hollowed Bodies" demonstrate that they still have plenty of energy to burn and unpleasant ways in which to murder you.