Metal Underground.com

A major step up from debut album “Infestation,” and a sure stop on the band’s stated goal of global domination, Dead Horse Trauma’s “Tellus Hodiernus Caducus” is an improvement in nearly every way from past efforts. Continuing to melt together metal, hardcore, and a bit of rock, the band’s latest album has ratcheted up the heaviness and taken the in-your-face attitude even farther than before.

Dropping much, but not all, of the clean vocals and nu-metal influences, everything on this release shows a band moving forward and taking the music to a higher level. Besides just simply an improvement in the actual quality of the production, each track is more coherent and the album is more unified. The songs this time around are heavier on the low end and generally more brutal overall than anything heard from Dead Horse Trauma before, and the end result is a groove-laden metalcore that’s heavy enough to crack skulls and still get a crowd to go nuts in the pit.

Moving outside the boundaries of groove and metalcore, the album works to establish its own identity by throwing in unexpected twists at times, usually in the form of dark sci-fi style sound effects and atmosphere. “Mr. Critical” draws in surprisingly discordant influences from black and death metal, as does the follow-up track “Screwdriver,” which has a darker feel and a slowly building chug that mixes up the melody with the heaviness in the right doses.

There are still instances of a nu-metal aesthetic that probably won’t please metal elitists (“Disbelief” featuring Myke Terry of Bury Your Dead having the most in common with the last album), and the heavy feedback sound on the screamed vocals does occasionally make songs sound overly similar, but the overall package here is completely headbang-worthy. “Tellus Hodiernus Caducus” makes huge strides forward for Dead Horse Trauma, and can appeal either to fans who want groove or metalheads who need a heavier musical assault.