Review: It would be a mistake to characterize this album simply as a Carcass clone, although the influence in theme and music is unmistakeable, as it takes a fusion of the best of two eras of Carcass and to it adds a musicality and sense of life that was not present in the original. The variations in structure and death metal-influenced use of introductory material and sense of melody from later Carcass (Necroticism) is preserved, but the use of distinctive melodies that sound borrowed from 1940s club hits of earlier Carcass (Reek of Putrefaction) is expanded upon here to give the music a sage, august character.
Unlike much of the grindcore to follow, this style drifts from the rigid punk hardcore aesthetic and embraces one that is closer to the aim of original hardcore, which is creating an abrasive and super-simplified version of the music that humans will eternally create. It does not aim to be a rock, metal or grind genre, and thus while it has many of the conventions of the underground it does not indulge them for their own sake but applies them surgically. Most songs begin with a melodic introduction, then pick up to an alternating thematic structure of a slower melodic hook for verses, then a sequence of faster riffs culminating in a tone series as pointedly articulate as the hooks are abstrusely suggestive.
Dynamic ranges of rhythm and of riff shape and construction make this a more distinctive listening experience than the original Carcass albums. Vocals approach the Demilich low-end intensity of burping bottom-string registers, but take a conversational tone that stretches into a growl wrapping itself around the rhythm of riffs underneath. All of what made Carcass great -- the absurdist morbidity, the life-inducing almost dancelike melodic lifts, the messy riffs so overflowing with supurative fissures of harmonic overlap that they almost extract themselves -- is here, augmented by an aerobic percussion section that sounds as if it may have derive some inspiration from clubby techno. While this CD was forgotten by most even when it was new, and is not accepted by many for refusing to adopt the conformist non-conformist uniform of grindcore as product, it remains one of the buried secrets of the legacy of underground music.
