12 Days of Christmetal: Carnival is Forever - Decapitated - 2011

I don't know pre-tragedy Decapitated (apparently a 2007 automobile accident left the band's drummer deceased and vocalist in a coma) and recently grabbed the repopulated band's Carnival is Forever based solely on its inclusion in many 2011 Top Ten lists. It's an extreme, highly technical metal assault that comes across with a very present-feeling, almost live production quality. It's also just OK for me. I like it, will shelve it as opposed to selling it and will probably never replay nor seek any additional Decapitated music (aside from working the excellent "Homo Sum" into some iTunes playlists). This brief record, clocking in around forty minutes with eight songs (one of which is an instrumental), plays like an EP structured around a couple good songs (add "404" to "Homo Sum" for the essentials) with the bulk sounding like one chug-chug-chug after another slightly different chug-chug-chug.  If I had been invested in the band in the past I may have been more interested to hear this development of their sound but as a wholly new (to me) standalone experience, Carnival is Forever, despite its name, amounts to about 10 minutes of fun.