Arterial Elegance
As we continue our journey through this meandering hellscape on this overloaded handcart, it is time to ponder our ‘Torn Arteries’ with our long haired, blood and guts lovers from Liverpool. Having traversed every plain, every terrain and every champaign, our extreme metallers are treating us gluttonous gourmands to a smorgasbord of new music, since 2013 and the thrash commander ‘Surgical Steel’. As a sweetener I revisited the video ‘Unfit For Human Consumption’ and celebrated the incision therapy that is present in this latest album. The cut and thrust of the music business mirrors the choice cuts constructed by our friends here, lyrics that make for thoughtful and provocative reading, touching more than a few nerves, in fact slicing them wide open and letting the crimson within flow freely, determining its own course. Carcass are extraordinary; an outfit that adheres its pus ridden cloak to the listener so that it may conspire to position the exquisite thrash groove under your skin and entrench itself therein. Working solidly and unforgivingly since 1986, they continue to conquer every obstacle and amass a healthy fanbase. Visually the cover is incredibly gorgeous too, artwork of the year for me without a doubt.
Opening with the album title the spectacle of sonic overtures pervades every orifice, their tendrils curling around each appendage enabling a pulsating, thrumming reaction, highly contagious yet concealing a zephyr like benevolence.
What about riffage? I hear you ask, well Carcass say ‘hold my beer’ for we do not disappoint our followers, throw yourselves into the pit of God tier fretwork and seal your destiny. The Mayan goddess Ixtab is referenced here too, showing the vast knowledge and research efforts that are behind each track, you learn something new with these guys, an education outside of school. Jump on board as ‘The Devil Rides Out’ and revel in the sound of ‘Flesh Ripping Sonic Torment’ obsessive and possessive a full on 9.43 minutes, and as a result cementing their irrefutable dominion over the metal scene.
Take a gander at ‘Kelly’s Meat Emporium’ and savour the delights on offer or find yourself under ‘The Scythe’s Remorseless Swing’ any way you slice it, this record gives us grit and devil spit in copious amounts.
A gnarlfest of epic proportions, the disembodiment of a languid heart, a surgical reanastomosis delicately engineered with precision surgical steel, wake up and smell the rotting Carcass.
Carcass – Torn Arteries out now via Nuclear Blast