Cartilage - Operating Altar

I’ve often used the phrase “not reinventing the wheel” when describing certain artists. From a musical standpoint, I’d say this applies to Cartilage: their new album, Operating Altar, features a crushing dose of thrash-inspired death metal, chock-full of guttural screams and riffage performed at breakneck speeds. You tend to know what you get with this genre, and if you like what you hear, odds are you’re gonna have a good time. But what sets Operating Altar apart is the concept at the center: a story that weaves together throughout the album’s nine tracks about an insane surgeon hell-bent on performing sickening experiments on his patients in a desolate hospital.

Concept albums are no easy feat, and piecing together a story with songs that conjure images of entrails strewn across an operating table, mutilated bodies, and guts galore is easier said than done. The band clearly pulls influence from horror movies (think Doctor Giggles, but actually scary), and the imagery is vivid throughout the album’s half-hour runtime. As a unit, Cartilage is locked in: co-vocalists Mark Wallace and Teresa Flory shred their vocal cords while spinning tales for our entertainment (Flory also contributes excellent guitar work), while lead guitarist Mike Flory, drummer Adam Houmam, and bassist Kienan Hamilton push the aggression as far as they possibly can. Operating Altar is indeed a fine example of what gore metal can do when pushed past the brink of insanity.