Take a look at what's happening in metal these days. Lots of bands are coming out "mixing" styles: Thrash and death. Melodic and Death. Hardcore and Thrash. Death and Hardcore. Black and Metalcore and you get the idea. Are there any bands that pick a category and stick w/ it? Severe Torture does just this, and quite well. They started out w/ death and they continue to play death. Whenever I hear Severe Torture, I always think "notey death metal". They've got awesome chunk-breakdowns, but most of their material consists of doubled-up speedy tremlo picked death lines. I saw them at the Ohio Death Fest last year and the show was energetic and phenomenal. Flawless performance that matched their album quality to a tee. Oh and then they busted out w/ some Cannibal Corpse wership by unleashing "Hammer Smashed Face" and it was like an adrenaline bomb was dropped on the pit! I like Severe Torture because they come straight out and say "This is the kind of music we like, the kind we've always liked, and the kind we'll always play. We love Cannibal Corpse, and they inspire us greatly. If you don't like it, we don't care." Misanthropic Carnage continues the blazing guttural death tradition w/ no compromise whatsoever. Hardly Cannibal Clones, they take basic concepts from Tomb of the Mutilated and The Bleeding and build on that w/ excellent death grooves and notey as hell guitar lines that break out the air tremlo every time. The bass sounds different because it almost has a liquidy "click" to it. Crystal clear drums consisting of infinite blast beats stir up an energy tornado that rips through the homes of people sitting quietly in their rocking chairs reading the GreenPeace newsletter & listening to Dave Matthews on a Sunday afternoon and leave a trail of complete death metal carnage and destruction. Severe Torture masturd the old-school death sound and has built their own on top of it, and the results are quite good. Misanthropic Carnage is as solid and almost as tight as it gets for speedy pit inducing death metal. Quality no-holds-barred death metal werth the money for hard-headed death & brutal death fiends.