For those who don’t know Autopsy…what?! You haven’t heard of Autopsy?! Man! Go to the store now and buy all their releases before listening to a second of whatever trendy flavour-of –the-month crap you picked up recently, poser scum! Don’t read this review, don’t check your email, don’t tie your shoelaces, just go to the record-store NOW! Gawd!
Anyhow, now let’s talk about Autopsy. Admittedly I wasn’t that blow away by ‘The Tomb Within’ when it first came out. I really could have done without hearing a ‘less-good’ version of 'Human Genocide'. Having been a massive Autopsy fan ever-since I got into extreme metal, I dreaded rather than anticipated new output from one of my favourite bands of all time. It seemed that the new EP was a step back from Abscess, something Reifert and Coralles had been working on for the past fifteen years since Autopsy was put on ice. However, after seeing the band live at PartySan last year, I was void of bad words. Even ‘The Tomb Within’ sounded amazing. Rarely am I this blown away by live-appearances; the honeymoon was back. Autopsy was the best band on the planet again.
So just about a month before the release of the track the band release a track from the upcoming album, entitled ‘Always About to Die’, and it completely blows away the EP! Everyone who hasn’t heard it should listen to it immediately on YouTube. So when Chris Reifert announced that “The album will contain no repeated EP tracks, no re-recorded old songs, no triggered trickery, and nothing less than the pure death metal brutality that Autopsy has always delivered.” I was understandably super-‘king-excited. Things got even better when I received news from MTUK that my month-long nagging to get this album for review was answered with a promo of ‘Macabre Eternal’, Autopsy’s fifth studio-album.
The first moments of the album, the song Hand of Darkness, shocked me, though. Some terrible chuggy metalcore accents kicks off the album. It totally beats me why they felt this was an appropriate way to open the album. Thankfully is has nothing to do with the rest of the album and after just over ten seconds the album kicks off and we are introduced to an awesome death metal riff a la ‘Gasping for Air’. The song is an excellent mix of Autopsy elements, although at times the obviousness of the repeated chorus gets on one’s tits a bit. Luckily the band is experienced enough to introduce new elements to keep the song interesting and… well, killer.
The second song, Dirty Gore Whore, starts with an awesome punk-speed death metal riff. It has some vocals that sound somewhat like Shitfun, but is it Reifert?… maybe it isn’t Reifert? Maybe it’s not even human? Great stuff. Then comes ‘Always About to Die’ the preview track mentioned above. As already confirmed at the live shows, Reifert’s voice is still intact. Of course it can never compare to the four classic albums, but it is great nonetheless. Sometimes some minor echo/reverb effects get a bit in the way and one ends up thinking why they’d be necessary. As for guitars - Cutler and Moralles’ solos/leads are Autopsy trademark and that old dogs have not changed a bit since the olden days. We get an unhealthy (in a good way) dose of it throughout the album, some major highlights here!
The title-track starts with a sick Reifert scream, but it is sort-of a confirmation that he can’t quite pull off the sicker-than-anyone-else scream as back in the band’s heyday… maybe it is the cleaner production? However, as the song progresses we witness Reifert performing his unique brand agonized death metal vocals and he really picks it up here. ‘Bridge of Bone’ shows more of great song-writing, it has this incredible fast opening riff… then sudden slow down, followed by a trademark Autopsy mid-paced section with a trademark Autopsy leads. Definitely get what you’re looking for there! On ‘Born Undead’ we even get a touch of Sabbath in there too.
Eric Cutler describes the 11th track, ‘Sadistic Gratification’ as “11 minutes and 33 seconds of pure fucking sickness,". It is quite a change from the rest of the album and I’m not sure how ‘Autopsy’ this is. I can’t really make up my mind about it. It features a lengthy recording of a woman whining and screaming stuff like ‘oh no, god no’ whilst Reifert goes on about sadistic pleasure etc. Somehow it feels… outdated, is not the right word, but it is the first word that comes to mind. At the end of this song we get a wee cock-rock solo, which is followed by the closing track ‘ Spill My Blood’, which is very early nineties Autopsy, punk elements shine through, awesome track.
The album last over an hour, an intense ejaculation of gore waiting for years and years to happen. Or as Cutler puts it” “about 65 minutes of brutality”. The album is indeed very long, but just stands the test of ‘time’. Unlike other re-union bands Autopsy have not completely overproduced their big comeback-album. The sound fitting, vaguely similar, yet nothing like, the previous albums. But yet there’s something missing, a sense of danger and maliciousness even. Reifert described the album as “the sickest and heaviest material that our rotten souls could possibly spew forth, and we are confident that it's our best stuff yet. The EP was a taste of what's to come, but now it's time for the full assault from beyond the grave."
That’s fair enough, and indeed it is a damn good consistent album. It has to be said that Autopsy play in a league of their own, but compared to the four previous albums, this one doesn’t come close. There is much less of sense of chaotic brutality than on the old recordings and whilst the sound is quite fitting, it still is somewhat too modern and clean for this sort of stuff. The songs are good, but they were never going to compete with the classics. The material also sounds very reminiscent to Abscess, which is not a bad thing by any means, but something is lacking for it to be pure Autopsy….
…When I think of it, isn’t this pretty much exactly the kind of conclusion everyone was foreseeing?
Anyhow, it looks like we can look forward to more Autopsy in the future, as Reifert says: “Right now, there's a lot of energy in the band, and it's not going away anytime soon. We have a few things to take care of, for sure."
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