Band:	Circle Of Dead Children
Album:	The Genocide Machine
Style:	Grindcore
Release date:	2001
A review by:	Herzebeth

01. Migration
02. The Genocide Machine
03. Cremationism (Become The Flame)
04. From Eros To Thanatos
05. Corpses Of Refinement a.k.a. The Men Behind The Sun
06. Only One Per Coffin
07. Barbarians And Henchmen
08. Isabella's Nightmare
09. Two-Week Notice
10. Extreme Cannibal Smoke!
11. Digestive Ceremony
12. When We Make The Clouds Scream
13. Beethoven's Children
14. It's A Bloody Day When You Get Your Head Nailed To A Kross
15. Wormpaste (Bled Through The Earth)
16. Ch / oR
17. Ctrl Alt Delete

This is the second full length album of this incredible band from USA since their good debut "Starving The Vultures". Circle Of Dead Children made it perfectly clear that they are no mediocre band, that they actually know how to make brutal yet catchy music and that they are masters in creating songs with deep, beautiful, philosophical and impossible to understand lyrics (but with a great groove on them). Their job was to polish all those elements, and my friends believe me? They worked very fucking hard.

The new album has deeper lyrics than "Starving The Vultures". The first message just punches you in the face - "Like the numb birds that failed to make their migration / Less than a Statistic, So are We". This song (Migration) talks about mankind and it's a big analogy of human life. Let me tell you, there is not a lot of Grindcore bands doing this kind of stuff! I swear, the music of this tune is actually structured, it has mid paced riffs and fast as hell drum beats. It starts a little slow, then the main riff appears blasting your speakers, then in the 0:31 second the tempo slows down to create the perfect ending. This is in fact one of the shorter tracks in "The Genocide Machine" but believe me it's awesome.

The same goes with the title track "The Genocide Machine". This song endures almost 2 minutes of insane melodies and the catchy riffs sound incredible. The best part of Circle Of Dead Children is exactly that - they have an incredible ability to write music, the composition of the songs is just overwhelming and every song goes from ultra fast to ultra catchy. This album also features Circle Of Dead Children's first Death Metal elements in the tune called "Beethoven's Child", the "mellowest" song in the album. Here, we can hear incredible effects and the vocals make great twists now and then, in the intro and main riff is when we all can hear Death Metal influences. In fact, these are very good Death Metal Influences that of course are all over the album, but is in this track where we can appreciate this completely.

Now about the vocals? Joe Horvath is a master in vocalizations. Let me first clear things up- most people always say: "?dude CODC fucking bites because the vocalist sucks?I can't understand a single word of what he is singing?". My friend, of course you can't and that's exactly the beauty of this band! Horvath does not usually sing lyrics, he just uses his voice as one more instrument to give the tune a special feeling to it. The effects are chilling indeed and the screams go from high pitched to insanely guttural. I am not saying this happens in every song (in fact "Human Harvest" is the only album with only 2 songs with actual understandable lyrics) but in a lot of tunes this experimental issue comes into place giving the song a great atmosphere (NOTE: please check the intro of "Two Week Notice").

It only takes one listen to the first track to notice this is not the average Grindcore band. Songs like "Digestive Ceremony", "The Genocide Machine", "Extreme Cannibal Smoke" (the best song in this CD, please check this song?it will make you cry of happiness or something) prove Circle Of Dead Children is not a mediocre band, so I highly recommend this album as it will be the perfect purchase indeed.

Follow: The Whole Album