Thursday, November 22, 2012

Carcass - Necroticism: Descanting the Insalubrious

"A Jigsaw Perfectly Assembled"


The album in the middle, out of Carcass' five releases where they genre-wise kind of change from each album, this is what I would call the definitive Carcass album. As the band is widely known for their melodic death metal and grindcore this album takes part in death metal, and it does it fucking right. Most of the tracks on the album got a little introduction with some people talking, on some it is for example pathologists. I don't know whether these sound clips are from a movie or something the band had specially recorded for the album. Either way it is something I find crucial in some way for the record. Instead of recognizing the starting riff of a song you might recognize a conversation between some pathologists talking about assembling decomposed bodies, or something else...

Since this is the first album to feature Michael Amott, it can easily be heard that he has joined since his solos are more melodic than Dr. Steers. Maybe it was the arrival of Amott that became the reason why the band got "softer" and maybe not, but if Carcass had just released grindcore albums I think they would just have been a flash in the pan, and not seen as the legends they are today, whether you like melodic death metal or not. Unlikely for Carcass, the album also feature the longest songs the band ever released, going all the way up to 7 minutes. When you listen to some bands and their longer songs you can hear it right away because you get bored, but it is not like that on Nercroticism. There is two tracks that lasts over seven minutes and they don't seem that long, the first time I looked and saw it lasted that long, I was like "huh... doesn't feel like that", so the tracks are not boring. Far from, and that goes for the whole album!

"Death is no escape..."

For the album cover the band thankfully chose another direction compared to their two first efforts. I never really liked the gore covers to be honest, I can't see the cool thing in them... They are just ugly and meaningless. As seen, this cover features a pathologists having some hammer smashing fun with a photo of the band. It's not really a spectacular photo, the bands name is not even eye popping. A pretty 'meh' cover, and I really think this album deserves a better cover. But to face the fact, Carcass just never were good at covers.

There is not really any songs I would like to pick out from the album, even though there are songs that stand higher than others. If I recommended two-three songs you would be wanting more, so go through the whole record. It is something you won't regret, since this death metal album is a jigsaw that has been perfectly aligned and assembled.

Rating

9.8