Pick Only One Album: Carcass

"LIFE IS HARD AS A MORTUARY TECHNICIAN!"

Best lyric ever.

Man, I love that album.

(i've been so desperate for 'new old carcass' i've been listening to exhumed and impaled lately, both credible imitators. if less talented songwriters by far.)

Hmm!

I do like Heartwork, but forgive me for saying it reminded me of when Metallica put out the Black Album after And Justice For All, you know like the straighter rock record. Didn't Entombed do something similar? Sorry I stopped listening religiously to death metal around 98/99 or something.

Not to de-rail the thread - but what albums by other bands come close to touching your fave Carcass album - has to be at least a death metal or grindcore band, say. I need to get another fix!

And my pick for one that rocks to a similar extent:
Death - Individual Thought Patterns.

How about Opeth's Morning Rise album for coming close to reaching the heights of your fave Carcass album? That's my pick to my own question.

i quite like "swansong", altho it sounds like a different band. as for the reissues they don't sound that different to me. "reek of putrefaction" is still, frankly, a horrible mess...

"what albums by other bands come close to touching your fave Carcass album"

Exhumed (Anatomy is Destiny) and Aborted (Goremaggedon: The Saw and the Carnage Done). Both have a bit of a Necroticism/Heartwork crossbreeding, which works fine for me. Anatomy is Destiny sounds like the faster parts on Necroticism or Heartwork strung together. Aborted's Goremaggedon has a fantastic cover of "Carnal Forge" and in general sounds close to enough for that to blend in, kind of an amped up Heartwork. I've heard a few other Carcass-alikes such as Impaled (Mondo Medicale) and Haemorrhage (Morgue Sweet Home), but they were nowhere near as good. Finding some others would be great, so I don't play out Carcass.

Necroticism is the album, at the top of the metal heap. Symphonies and Heartwork also great, but Necroticism is perfect and the reissue sounds spotless. Tools of the Trade is also fine for some extra Necroticism quality material. I wish they had packed this in as an extra disc with the reissue.

I'm tempted to raise the question of what is their best song title, but that would be a thread in its own right.

"Lavaging Expectorate of Lysergide Composition" rolls off of the tongue nicely.

Is Heartwork typically regarded as conceptual?

i think the concept was awesomeness

That goes for their whole catalog, though!

their whole catalog is a conceptual statement on the mighty power of awesome

nah, rox. but it is regarded as one of the best albums ever made.

I just didn't know if that was anyone else's take on it.

a ton of albums in that genre around that time had the same concept

It was a very good year.

gonna go with 'heartwork' cause it grooves so damn hard

i really do have a soft spot for the straight up grind stuff of earlier records, though

Symphonies is sentimental for me too, even though it's the one I have on CD. My Heartwork vinyl gets spun a lot--Necroticism is sadly neglected. I have to change that.

If I have to choose my favorite Death Metal record ever, it's Odium by Morgoth.

i never really thought of morgoth as a-list death metal. i'll have to go tape-digging and see if my opinion might change after more than a decade (jesus i feel old).

The first Morgoth album Cursed is definitely b-list death metal. Odium is simply a brutal art/metal classic. The final album Feel Sorry for the Fanatic is great, but very alernative/Killing Jokish (though not Goth!).

The early e.p.s are more like c-d-grade death metal.

Anyway, I'll stack Odium up against Master of Puppets or anything else. It's simply one of my favorite albums in any style. The guitar is especially unique throughout.

REek of Putrefaction. Not even necessarily saying it's my 'favorite' by them but it's just so raw and ....sick.

Ever heard that lolsome album of country covers that Jeff Walker recorded?

did he do it in his weird Peter Lorre sounding death growl?

YES.

I must hear this!

actually it's not very good

It's completely absurd.

HAPPY TRAIIIIIIIIIIIIIILLSSSSSSS TO YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!11!!1!!

raining grey day after Christmas

today is a perfect day for some motherfucking Carcass

^cashsitta

Now:

I assume you are all familiar with the episode of Red Dwarf with Steer and Walker as the band Smeg and the Heads?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eA6ykQMVP3Y

i am. that made me totally way too nerd-happy when i first saw it.

Haha, lovely.

Another vote for "Symphonies of Sickness". I just love "Exhume to Consume".

Heartwork for me - a bold and fairly unique blend of extreme and populist aesthetics.

"LIFE IS HARD AS A MORTUARY TECHNICIAN!"

Best lyric ever.

The best lyric ever is actually "BRING OUT YOUR DEAD... FOR USE AS MANUUUURRE!!"

t/s "exhume to consume" on symphonies vs. weird intro version of "exhume to consume" on grindcrusher (later on that wake up and smell the carcass thing)

Lyric wise, I was always fond of:

"I EXTRACT THE GULLET TO END UP IN MY BUCKET!"

saw carcass live last sunday, and oh my god what a show. great to see bill steer back shredding and doing what he does best, albeit on a les paul! amazing tight show, and such great hooks even in the 'symphonies...' material.
highlights: 'exhume to consume', 'incarnated solvent abuse', 'heartwork'

also, i enjoy listening to carcass guitar solos more than any other band in extreme metal

les paul jr no less

Charlie - was that in Sydney? I was at the Sydney show, just amazing. Steer and Amott together (unlike we got on the 93 tour) were great, and what a treat getting material off the first 2 albums. Those highlights are apt, and would have loved Pedigree Butchery too.

Funny reading the earlier posts, I went back to Heartwork last year sometime, and really got into atleast 2/3rds of it. In 93 or whenever, I wrote it off as a Black Album styled sin. Now seeing the light, it's super hooky grind like no other!

Just posted this on I pWN etc by mistake:

I was looking for a Carcass thread cos I just listened to Swansong and I wanted to say how much better it is than I remember it (though the lyrics are pants). It's not grindcore or death anymore, but it's still a really solid, extremely assured heavy rock album with lots of inventive twists.

piers, yeah that was the sydney show! definitely one of the better shows of any genre i've seen in a long while. walker was in great form as a frontman, though i don't think he really appreciated getting beer cans thrown at him (though he handled it well).

chap, yeah swansong is a very entertaining record with some great riffs. steer is doing some great stuff on there, pity it's so maligned. the lyrics are terrible though - totally don't go with the style of vocals, and just too simplistic for carcass somehow.

yep, les paul jr. haha

coolest dude ever

reek of putrefaction, precisely because it sounds so shitty and raw.

FYI

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v136/primrosehill/carcasssonglength.jpg

my job can be really boring

ok please read this interview:

http://www.goddamnbastard.org/carcass/interviews/peardrop.html

Those three twisted minds have certainly better things to offer us than anatomy lessons. Musically tending to a technical improvement, we're now far of the early days of the band's so short tracks, but an experimental crushing metal which can accelerate like one thousand turbos raging and pounding through a huge break of heaviness. There's not two Carcass-sounding bands in the world and it's better like this.

There's not two Carcass-sounding bands in the world and it's better like this.

oh, 1990, so naive.

lol smeg and the heads

I had a dream last night that I went to see Carcass and Steve Coogan was their new frontman and bass player. He performed the whole gig sat in a rocking chair.

this is the most important challenge ever posed on ilx

one day we will all be reduced to one carcass album

i choose heartwork

My opinion on fav Carcass albums changes fequently...right now, Symphonies of Sickness

love love carcass.

nice to see some quality entombed talk upthread as well. i've been playing the shit out of clandestine lately. my oh my is that album a riff monster.

Swansong is underrated, some great riffs and grooves there.

the guitars on heartwork are so bananas

Good LORD this dude can play drums.

It's hard for me to get a sense for how big these guys were at the time of, say, Necroticism... Were they basically widely and hugely loved in the metal world, or were they somewhat polarizing? I understand that this record is sort of a bridge between their earlier grind sound (I've got Symphonies of Sickness on the way) and the stuff on Heartwork, and it seems like grind was somewhat polarizing, so I'm just curious. But man, this record is something else. Absolutely brimming with life and vitality, which is kinda funny given that there are songs about using ground-up bodies as fertilizer.

I know Heartwork was a reasonably big deal in the UK metal press when it came out (pretty sure they got front page of at least one of the big three mags). Can't tell you about Necrotism's reception though, I wasn't into this stuff yet.

Absolutely brimming with life and vitality, which is kinda funny given that there are songs about using ground-up bodies as fertilizer.

One thing I really like about it is that if you were to strip away the insane distortion a lot of the guitar melodies would actually be quite jolly!

one thing i love about Necroticism is how Jeff Walker's raspy caws are perfectly offset against Bill Steer's lower-register rumbles from the deep. it seems so casual and natural when you're listening to it, but then you realise, fuck no, this kind of shit isn't happening anywhere else. out of all the reunited bands i've seen, none have given me more pleasure than Carcass.

I need those reissues with the documentary in several continuing parts, don't I?

NECROICTISM!

Listening to it drunk and right now it's my favourite album of all time.

Misspelled it, but you know what I mean.

I was a HUGE fan of Reek, almost as huge a fan of Symphonies and after that it got a little too metal for my tastes at the time. They do take pride of place in my musical heritage as being the step over the line for my parents to start being worried about me. They were fine w/ me hanging anarcho Crass posters and were down w/ Satan but the whole mortuary technician schtick was a little much for them.

seeing them in four months, so excited. Reek - Heartwork is probably as incredible a run as any metal band has put together.

NO ONE TOLD ME THEY WERE RECORDING A NEW ONE

No Amott or Owen though.

whaaaat

http://www.blabbermouth.net/news.aspx?mode=Article&newsitemID=186790

While the final track listing has yet to be confirmed, the following songs were recorded during the sessions:

* The Master Butcher's Apron
* The Granulating Dark Satanic Mills
* A Congealed Clot Of Blood
* A Wraith In The Apparatus
* 316l Grade Surgical Steel
* Cadaver Pouch Conveyor System
* Captive Bolt Pistol
* Intensive Battery Brooding
* None Compliance To Astm F899-12 Standard
* Mount Of Execution
* 1985/Thrasher's Abattoir
* Unfit For Human Consumption
* Zochrot
* Livestock Marketplace

The titles suggest a concept album about radical vegetarianism.

* The Granulating Dark Satanic Mills

welp i died when i read this

Can't wait to hear Walker say "This one's called None Compliance To Astm F899-12 Standard!" in his death growl.

"LIFE IS HARD AS A MORTUARY TECHNICIAN!"

Best lyric ever.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, August 10, 2004 4:40 PM (10 years ago)

sometimes, i just think of ned, saying this

last time thought about it on my way to the grocery store

life is hard as a grocery technician

carcass is my favorite band

symphonies of sickness > necroticism >= heartwork > reek of putrefaction > surgical steel > swansong

normally don't go in for discography rankings but when they're all fundamentally great it's more fun

Heartwork>Necroticism>>Surgical Steel>>Swansong>Symphonies>Reek

I apprieciate the first two albums on a conceptual level but they're a bit horrible to listen to.

trust me once they click with you nothing else will suffice

symphonies is probably my favorite metal record

Yeah I should give Symphonies at least another bash.

They've inidcated on their FB page that the new one's nearly done.

shouts out to the really quietly mixed clean choral vocals in "swarming vulgar mass of infected virulency"

I am not a metal expert, but Heartwork is my favorite of all time: perfect balance of heavy cleanliness and gleaming filth. Like a metal band comprised of T-1000s.

Necroticism is the one. It's up there with Beneath The Remains.

Mind you, I haven't listened to it in full in a long time. My CD of it (and about 500 others) was lost in a very bad flood some years ago.

did carcass pull all of their stuff from streaming bc i was gushing about them last week

brad don't you ever worry that on judgment day you are gonna have a lot of explaining to do, favorites-wise

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fT24YUVzI5I&t=5s

Pretty fuckin good.

very nice!

like the Autopsy homage in the pic here: https://loudwire.com/carcass-under-the-scalpel-blade-new-song/

agree, the song is pretty great. still doing the melo-death/grind thing, but it doesn't feel like a copy of Surgical Steel.

a whole album of this, I'll be happy.

It feels scuzzier than Surgical Steel.

new album August 7th. apparently "Under the Scalpel Blade" did not....make the cut....and it's real good, so that bodes well.

oh wow, I didn't even realize it didn't make the cut.

Excited as hell.

Wish it could be sooner.