Carnal Forge
Aren’t you dead yet?

July 2004
Released: 2004, Century Media
Rating: 4.5/5
Reviewer: Anders Sandvall

Carnal Forge were formed in Västerås Sweden –97. The year after came their debut called “WHO’s GONNA BURN” and now it’s time to follow up “THE MORE YOU SUFFER” from last year with this fifth album.



Last year didn’t turn out as the band expected. It started out nice with six headliner shows in Japan and then they went over to the US and the New Jersey Metal Meltdown. After that it was meant that they should join The 2003 Metal Gods US Tour with acts like Halford, Testament, Primal Fear, Immortal and Amon Amarth. That tour was supposed to do 34 shows but some problem occured and they only did 6, the rest of the tour was canceled. Carnal Forge headed over to Sweden again and well there they joined Testaments Scandinavia tour and they also did shows on different festivals all around Europe. After that they finally sat down to begin the work on “AREN’T YOU DEAD YET”.



I don’t know who’s written the music and lyrics on the album or when it’s recorded. Carnal Forge delivers ten tracks and Jonas has recorded the vocals in his own studio Black Lounge everything else was recorded in Studio Underground (as they’ve used to record all the previous albums in) and I’m not sure where the studios are located.



Thrash metal will always live and be around just look at the old heroes like Exodus, Testament and Slayer who still lives and constantly are recruiting new fans. Carnal Forge is among the elite in their genre with their bay area aggressive Swedish melodic death/thrash metal and their incredibly hardcore energy.



The Kuusisto brothers delivers incredibly sharp guitar duels along with some really stunning twin guitar play. Lars and Stefan are incredibly tight together in the rhythm section and Jonas practically screams out his anger with words like destruction and despair in the lyrics, he sounds extremely angry to say the least. The guys plays thrash combined with melodic death metal, there’s not any calmer passages instead its full speed ahead. The speed is so high that Jonas barely has time to spit out the lyrics.



I have only a promo copy of the album so I don’t have the lyrics but it’s only to look at the titles to see what the songs are about. It’s mainly about violence, death, anxiety and misery in general. Apparently the band has worked harder than before with the material. I think that Carnal Forge has similarities with another Swedish band that plays this kind of music, The Haunted from Gothenburg.



Once again I have to say that this is a brilliant album with well written material, a strong production, some really competent musicians and an extremely angry vocalist that really fits the hard and aggressive music.



After the album been released it’s only to head out on tour for Carnal Forge, but they have already done a few sneak shows at Sweden Rock at the beginning of June.



The info note says that this should be more brutal and furious than ever and I can only agree to that, even the cover looks really brutal. Carnal Forge shows that 2004 is payback time for all who have doubted on their capacity to deliver well played thrash/death metal on elite level.



I have no favorite songs all are of a very high class straight through. It’s an album that really impresses you.