Review - Carcass

Carcass
Surgical Steel

A few minutes ago, I saw a picture of a sloth in pyjamas and utterly lost my shit. I was once almost paralysed with happy when I was in the same room as David Ian Rabey. I get excited easily, is the point I'm trying to make. But even by my standards, this ranks pretty high - a new album from Carcass. One of the greatest metal bands of all time. Co-inventors of grindcore. The kings of gore. Honestly, I wasn't sure what to expect - this is a band renowned for being constantly in motion, changing with every record.

Actually, it's pretty much the same variety of melodic death metal that they played on Heartwork. Whether that's good or bad depends on your opinion of that album - personally, I love Heartwork, which is strange, because I normally run a mile when I hear a metal band described as "melodic".
       Opening track "1985" does not get the record off to a promising start. It might be a pretty good intro, where it not for that shrill, paper-thin, irritating-as-fuck guitar tone that ruins so much metal. Fortunately, that song is only there to lull you into a false sense of boredom before Thresher's abattoir smacks you upside the head with a hammer made of riffs and drums. Oh yeah - the drums. The drumming on this album is fantastic - some of the best on any Carcass album.
       Third track Cadaver Pouch Conveyor System suffers from some all-too-intelligible vocals. If you're the type of person who enjoys hearing metal lyrics, then this won;t be a problem. But then, if you're the type of person who enjoys hearing metal lyrics, then I suggest you seek medical help. The same problem ruins A Congealed Clot of Blood, or would if the drumming weren't so epic. Then that awful lead guitar tone turns up and kills it properly. It's a shame, because it would be a good guitar solo otherwise.
       The vocals are a recurrent problem with this album - they're heavy, sure, but too easy too understand. That wouldn't be a problem if the band wrote good lyrics, but this is Carcass we're talking about. So the clear, precise phrasing really brings down what could otherwise have been a damn good album. That, and the guitar tone. That fucking guitar tone. Whenever a good, hefty riff kicks in (and this is Carcass, so that happens a lot) up pops that lead guitar, like an annoying younger brother, ruining everything with its inane yammering. That and the vocals together gradually suck the life out of this album, until after twenty minutes I'm wishing it was over.
       The riffs, though, are fantastic. Thanks to them, this album is at least listenable. In fact, if you listen to them individually, the songs on Surgical Steel are almost all pretty good. In fact, they're very good. But if you listen to the album as a whole, it's just too long. The songs all follow pretty much the same pattern, and there's only so much up-tempo melodic death metal that I can take. Final track Mount of Execution is a welcome relief, even if the guitar tone does rob it of much-needed heaviness - I can see that slow, chunky riff causing havoc in a moshpit.

So, pros: great riffs, epic drumming.
Cons: Shite guitar tone, audible lyrics, lack of variety.
Rating: 6/10