Bonecarver: Evil Never Dies
2021 has been earmarked by many as one for rebirth, rebuilding and reinvention as the world begins to open up following the COVID-19 pandemic; two weeks in, and Spanish death metal band CANNIBAL GRANDPA announced their own regeneration; they were now called BONECARVER.
“A lot of people, particularly in the States, thought that we were a joke slam band or meme,” admits guitarist Alex Tena. “We are a serious project and we didn’t want to be confused with anything that could be considered a novelty.”
“At the same time, we were constantly being compared to CANNIBAL CORPSE,” reveals second guitar Alberto Bravo. “We love their music, but we’re not trying to be like them aside from the fact we play death metal. Also it felt right to do so just after signing a deal with Unique Leader Records, as it felt like we were beginning again. We have a fanbase who understand the name change and it also felt like a ‘now or never’ moment.”
Under their former guise, BONECARVER released two EPs that focused around the American serial killer Albert Fish, but in order to help their fanbase reconnect with them following the name change – and to show what they were capable of to a new audience – they decided to revisit the killer’s story for their debut release on Unique Leader. The result was Evil, an almighty juggernaut of brutal death metal that, in a year which has already seen some fantastic releases in the field of extreme music, is right up there with the best of them. “We wanted to put an end to our chapter on CANNIBAL GRANDPA too,” explains Alex, “and we thought that the best way was to literally kill it, so to speak! In the future we won’t be talking about his history any more.”
The evolution now complete, BONECARVER aren’t ruling out doing future songs or albums about serial killers, but for the time being they want to concentrate on more conceptual, societal issues, albeit with two big exceptions. “We want to explore things related to the idea of ‘evil’, but not in a political or anti-religious sense,” reveals Alberto. “For example, one question I’ve been thinking about for a month or so, and chatting with friends about, is ‘are we born evil or grow up evil?’ Is there something genetic that makes us evil or is it because we were raised in a specific way? Maybe we’ll go into that direction or maybe the next album will be happy death metal, who knows?! But right now, we’d like to do more conceptual material, although it’s too early to say what that will look like.”
The release of Evil signalled the end of a long three years for the band – if things had gone as they were originally meant to, it would have been a CANNIBAL GRANDPA album released at the end of 2018 or the beginning of 2019, but waiting for other things to develop turned out to be a smart move. “We weren’t happy with the situation at the time, with our old managers,” confesses Alex. “We want to, and need to, go outside our country to play and this is a really difficult thing for bands in Spain to do, so we needed to change the team we had first and now we have, we can push forward.”
Although Spain has more major music festivals per square kilometre than any other country in the world, at least 200 with a capacity of 20,000 or more every summer, you can count on one hand the amount of artists and bands who have made it on an international scale from there, with much of the talent relegated on bills in favour of bigger, world-renowned acts. It does mean, however, that there is a burgeoning underground of sheer quality and, although BONECARVER have been at the forefront of that scene in Madrid, they want to be another addition to that exclusive list. “We’ve had a couple of bands who are signed to Century Media and the like,” says Alex. “But we don’t really have a scene that is in the mainstream.” Alberto adds. “If everything goes well, maybe we can start touring a little bit around Europe in November/December time and then from the Spring of 2022 we’re really going to be travelling a lot.”
It’s ambitious for sure, but if BONECARVER are going to continue producing the sort of music they’ve done on Evil, they’ll have very little trouble in gaining recognition outside of Spain. The amount of potential from these four Madrid natives is astonishing, and if you like THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER, the aforementioned CANNIBAL CORPSE or DYING FETUS, then this band are right up your street and worthy of your time. Not bad for an outfit formerly called CANNIBAL GRANDPA…
Evil is out now via Unique Leader Records.
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