Metal Underground.com

Waking the Cadaver and their brand of “Slamming Gore Groove” comes back for a second round with “Beyond Cops. Beyond God.” While they have been ostracized by the metal community since their infamous 2006 demo, it seems that Waking the Cadaver is looking to turn over a new leaf and gain some credibility among the doubters. There are stronger death metal influences and deep bellowing growls overtake the previously hilarious pig grunts as the main vocal style. Even with these changes, this is still the same band we all love to hate. The breakdowns are prevalent, the songs are repetitive, and the instrumental work is mediocre at best. It’s like the old cliché goes: the more things change, the more they stay the same.

This album is a slight improvement over the band’s awful debut album. The stylistic changes in their sound go a long way in making the album seem less noisy and unstructured. The band tries out a mini-epic with “Sadistic Tortures” and tones down the sexual violence in the lyrics. In its place are tales of mayhem and lawless actions against all who stand in the way. There's nothing poetic to be found and lines like “Go internet fagit cry” are proof of that. At least the band tried to act more serious this time around; sorry, no interludes of bong hits.

This is the first album with the new line-up, featuring guitarists Mike Mayo and Rob Wharton of The Adept. While they played some technical riffs in their former band, their contributions on “Beyond Cops. Beyond God” are more simplistic in design. With the exception of an all-too-brief lead in “Suffering Upon Revenge,” the guitar work consists of an endless array of one-note slamming breakdowns and blazing discordant notes. While the shift in sound could be attributed to the new members, the songwriting is so familiar that somebody who didn’t know there was a line-up change wouldn’t know the difference.

Peering closer at the album, sifting through the obnoxious breakdowns and bree-bree sounds, there is an archetype in place for something ambitious. “Reign Supreme” starts out with legitimate death metal carnage, a gutsy move that ultimately fails to deliver a big payoff. “Made in Hell” has a mid-tempo pace and an abundance of groove flavor, but works to the band’s favor by avoiding the more annoying idiosyncrasies of the earlier material. These few tracks could lead to a major break-through down the road, once the band’s chemistry starts to flourish as a longer amount of time is spent touring and writing together.

“Beyond Cops. Beyond God” is an average deathcore album with hints of progression that seems better suited for live crowds of screaming kids than a sterile studio environment. Fans of the band and the genre will lap this up as another winner for Waking the Cadaver, while the critics and naysayers will mock them even more for following in the footsteps of Job For A Cowboy and Annotations of an Autopsy by taking the death metal sound for a test-drive. A review like this will do little to change the minds of those that think Waking the Cadaver is the best thing in metal today; everybody else would be wise to show trepidation at “Beyond Cops. Beyond God.”