Typified by a myopic relentlessness that cheerfully echoes the frenzied clawhammer blows to the skull favoured by the serial killers they so often bring to lyrical life, Cannibal Corpse’s 26-year reign at the top of the death-metal tree may have never delighted underground purists. The band, snooty elitists will argue, offer little more than blood-spattered meat and potatoes. But their status as standard-bearers for musical extremity is unquestionable. A Skeletal Domain only makes occasional left turns away from the Buffalo quintet’s long-established blend of straightforward brutality and lyrical grotesquery, but after 12 albums of this stuff, they can hardly be blamed for sticking to a winning formula on their 13th. A cleaner, sharper production certainly gives the likes of teeth-shattering opener High Velocity Impact Splatter and the scattershot thud of Sadistic Embodiment a more pristine air than anything on 2012’s Torture, but it is the subtle flights of perverse structural fancy lurking within the sustained riff tirade of The Murderer’s Pact and the gleefully unsavoury Asphyxiate to Resuscitate that make this one of Cannibal Corpse’s most absorbing records in years.