Carcass

Heartwork.

This album is often praised as one of the finest heavy metal albums out there, and while I'm not the biggest Carcass fan on the planet I can respect what they did for the genre and that this is a quality album.

Heartwork itself grates on me. The drum tone irritates me and Jeff Walker's vocals plain piss me off. He's nowhere near as bad as someone like Oliver Sykes, but he's also not up their with harsh vocalists like JR Hayes (whom I would easily give my testicles to). The record also has a hollow feeling to me, which was constantly nagging at me and pulled away from the experience - I guess production wasn't top notch in '93 though.

Enough of this bullshit though. Onto the songs themselves.

1) Buried Dreams. This isn't an album opener. It's as simple as that. It doesn't open your eyes to Carcass and I'm sure that people would've gotten bored of this song. The initial riff is fun and moderately catchy, but it doesn't show you what Carcass are about. Simply put, it's meh. The solo on this song was, to me, pisspoor. It's cool and all, but the song doesn't progress into it at all. YOU'RE NOT FUCKING KERRY KING. Yadayadayada, ending double kicks are sweet.

2.5/5 carrots

2)Cranal Forge. This would have been a far better opener in my opinion. It's got a killer opening riff that is just full of catchiness (not like the AIDs kind, but like the "omg i'm a dog and i need to catch that frisbee" kind) and it's blatantly aggressive! The song sadly does degenerate though, and slows down rather rapidly which made me want to punch my junk. This can be cool if you're able to do it flawlessly though and Carcass really don't perform it well on Cranal Forge... which leads me to the length of the song. It wasn't too long, but by god it could've been condensed. Fuck.

3.5/5 pumpkins

Oh, by the way, everyone in Carcass had/has amazing hair.

3) No Love Lost. One thing I have to say about Carcass is that they knew how to write cool riffs. No Love Lost opens up with a really cool section that immersed me straight away. After that though, it god boring. The only part that stood out from the intro was the solo, and that was too fucking far away.

2/5 celery sticks

4)Heartwork. One of the only songs on the album that had me ready to punch someone full of love. It's full of facefucking awesome and shit-shiningly cool segments. Amott really shines in this song (HE SHOULD NEVER HAVE DONE ANYTHING WITH ARCH ENEMY EVER). I didn't look up the lyrics, but I swear "we're off to masturbate" was said somewhere near the end. From about 3:20 onwards, Carcass prove why they're one of the biggest and best things to happen to metal.

4.5/5 eggplants

5) Embodiment. Fuck off. YAWN.

1/5 "fuck you"'s

6)I don't know if it was because it followed one of the most meh-diocre songs of Carcass' career, or because it's just an awesome standalone track, but The Mortal Coil is the one song on Heartwork that had me fapping nonstop. Unrelenting speed, aggression, gallops that would make Maiden proud, epic harmonies... Yeah. Zero bullshit here. Perfect solo and some sweet headbanging moments here.

5/5. Masturbation worthy.

7)Abeit Macht Fleisch - Probably one of my favourite riffs on the album, though the song itself doesn't really go anywhere till the first minute. Carcass should pull me in instantly imo. After the first minute, the song really picks up and the direction is amazing, though I keep hearing blast beats and Suicide Silence comes into my head. Fuck the music in the modern ager we live in. The solo also doesn't really work for me and feels really forced.

4.5/5 onions

8) Blind Bleeding The Blind. I chuckled as soon as I saw the name of this song. Amott likes names like this. BLIND DEAD BLEEDING THE BLIND AND BURYING THEIR DEAD. There's some initial speed and sweet double kicking, but nothing that hasn't been heard already on the album. Thankfully that lasts less than 30 seconds and the song evolves into some amazing facefuckingly cool... thing. This is something that you could play fighting games to.

The only drawback to this song is that it could have finished at the 3 minute mark, but keeps going for another two. I'm not saying the last two minutes is bad, it's just that it's enough. Take a page out of Isis' book guys, GOD. The solo at the 3:50 mark DOES make the song, but it could've been incorporated far earlier. Then it gets back into the same shit as before and there's something said about decadence. Bleh.

4/5 peas

9) Doctrinal Expletives. Seriously, give Carcass a medical dictionary and there's an album for them. I was thoroughly unimpressed by this song. It's cool and all, but they did all this cool shit only one song ago. It's really just a watered down BBTB. I couldn't help imagining converting this song into rap and having some black midget hardcore dancing to it for some reason. Black midgets have always interested me. This song bored me so much that I was talking about black midgets. Shit yeahhhhh. It's not a terrible song, it's just... Samey! The song has one of the coolest solos on Heartwork, but again, I felt that it just didn't mesh with the song.

2/5 radishes

10) Death Certificate. I could tell this was the last song just by the opener. This is one of the songs that The Black Dahlia Murder's "I Will Return" reminds me of, and I don't know why. Death Certificate is definitely one of the most solid songs on the album and it's chock-full of sweet riffs and good vocal sections, followed by excellent harmonies around the solo, I was really close to jizzing. The breakdown after the solo made me cringe though. It's not that it's bad, it's just that breakdowns weren't the big thing in the early 90's and i'm so fucking sick of them now. A very solid way to end the album.

4/5 heartz.

Overall? 4/5 viking helmets.

Yeah. Fuck writing an ending.

Listen to Carcass on Myspace:
http://www.myspace.com/carcass