Loyal to their “meeting” with their fans, Body Count has once again come up with a brand new studio album after a three-year gap between releases. As a matter of fact, their two previous records (“Manslaughter” and “Bloodlust”) were absolutely superb thus raising the bar high for the albums to follow. So the question was if “Carnivore” could live up to the fans’ expectations and see eye to eye its two predecessors. Naturally, I am only referring to the band’s latter period (when Ice-T decided to reform Body Count) as I am a firm believer that during the 90s Body Count recorded its finest material.
“Carnivore” opens up with the title track which is really the best cut on the record as it clearly reminds of the first couple of records by Body Count. A little below –in the tracklist and from a quality standpoint- we find “Bum-Rush” while the last brilliant song on the album is the closing one, called “The Hate Is Real” that blows you away with its true thrash aesthetic. And that’s all about it really if we are talking about standout moments on the album…
The rest of the songs are mediocre (or in the best case simply OK). Amy Lee of Evanescence fame is really out of place on “When I’m Gone” while Hatebreed’s Jamey Jasta participation on “Another Level” doesn’t take the song to…another level. The rendition of “Ace of Spades” is spot on and the re-recording of “Colors” is quite good, I must say. Needless to say that every Body Count record is really important from a lyrical standpoint and Ice-T once again delivers the goods on this department but we needed that something extra from Body Count. Maybe the fact that Ernie C. didn’t contribute anything on the album played its role. I don’t know…
Personally, I wasn’t disappointed but on the other hand I wasn’t thrilled with the final outcome…at least, most of it. I expected far more after two excellent records in a row. That’s all.
Highlight: Body Count has set a tradition of recording a cover tune in their albums as two previous ones featured “Institutionalized” and “Raining in Blood/Postmortem”. By the way, both of them kicked major ass!
