Label: Nuclear Blast Records
Date: October 30th, 2020
Remember the movie Back to the Future? I do not have a time-traveling DeLorean automobile and I have no intent to go that far (1955 seems to be so far), but I have my brain cells that will bring me back in February 2020. Pioneers of goregrinde, Carcass, have announced their 7th album “Torn Arteries” will be released in August 2020. Obviously it didn’t happen.
Each product I have ever bought from China lasted a maximum of two weeks. One bat and few months later, the world has changed just because China finally succeeded and made a product that lasts not only over a few weeks, but f***** up the whole world. Despicable!
Due to many problems caused by a surprisingly successful discovery of modern China, instead of delivering albums, we got only 18 minutes of Carcass music. But what an 18 minutes!
“The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue” from the first riff promises the finest piece of Manchester metal. Dual unforgettable and addictive guitar riff, galloping rhythm often used by power metal bands, but well incorporated in Carcass dark harmony, brutal vocals against melody, simply brings us back to classic Carcass sound. Six minutes passed in a blink of an eye and hungry for more, you are on the “The Long and Winding Bier Road”. This song includes Carcass recognizable harmony, well-constructed and well balanced music and morbid lyrics and anthemic chorus.
Carcass mentions Swann-Morton in the next song “Under the Scalpel Blade”:
You’re the slithering
Ectothermal
White serpent, Sigma
The Aldrich Weller Swann-Morton and sterilance.
Swann-Morton is a British manufacturer of scalpel handles, blades and other surgical equipment and it is not surprising at all because where the Carcass is, there is a medicine too. Obviously.
“Slaughtered in Soho” closes the EP with brutality and melody. Melodic brutality?! If anyone would ask you which song would you like to listen to while being slaughtered, then this is the right choice (I have to be a bit morbid too).
The whole album smells like mix of “Heartwork” and “Surgical Steel” with a touch of “Swan Song” with a bit softer production compared with “Surgical Steel”.
Cover art represents modified Rod of Asclepius with the single snake coiling around a scalpel or blade something medical. Rod of Asclepius is a Greek deity associated with healing and medicine. Listening to Carcass in these crazy times, “Despicable” is healing enough for me.
Back to the future once again…
Ken Owen had a band as a teenager. The band’s name was Torn Arteries. Whenever it will be released, the album “Torn Arteries” will be homage to Owen who had a brain hemorrhage back in 1999.
Carcass is one of those bands that developed their own style so you can smell them miles always. They are brutal but gentle, rough but elegant, creepy but pleasant league of gentleman. From goregrind to death metal Carcass proved they are a chief physician of metal.
