CARCASS: HEARTWORK (1993)
1) Buried Dreams; 2) Carnal
Forge; 3) No Love Lost; 4) Heartwork; 5) Embodiment; 6) This Mortal Coil; 7)
Arbeit Macht Fleisch; 8) Blind Bleeding The Blind; 9) Doctrinal Expletives; 10)
Death Certificate.
This is where opinions begin to split, skulls
commence to crack, and symposia of sickness start degenerating into pedigree
butchery. For some people, Heartwork
is the absolute pinnacle of the shivery art of Carcass; for others, it is an
unforgivable betrayal of the primary values for which this band had so
affirmatively stood up in the past. What's up with the sissy title? What's up
with the symbolic, but generally inoffensive album cover? What's up with
Carcass songs called ʽNo Love Lostʼ and ʽThis Mortal Coilʼ, titles more
suitable for Celine Dion and, uh... This Mortal Coil? What's up with the lyrics
being almost free of new anatomical terminology? What's up with the clean,
almost sterile production? Where have all the gory times gone?
Of course, you cannot blame an artist for
wanting to break out of a stereotype — and, let's face it, by 1993 the band's
«gore-grind» schtick was getting old, not to mention that it had been successfully
picked up by quite a few newcomers, like Cannibal Corpse, whose primary point
was to outgross the old masters, whatever it takes. Reasonably, Steer and
Ammott must have decided that they had no real interest in competing with
others in the grossness department, and that they would try something different
— namely, to «clean up» their act a bit and go for a synthesis of grindcore
brutality and melodic heavy metal, where the individual songs would have more
individuality while still being conjoined by a general atmosphere of
viciousness.
Thus, only a couple of tunes here truly remind
of the Carcass of old (ʽCarnal Forgeʼ is the best «retro» example), while the
rest are strictly in the «melodic death metal» vein, with distinct, often
seriously slow riffs from Steer and the usual classically-influenced leads from
Amott. The vocals remain in incomprehensible growl mode throughout, which is a
minus — I think that stuff like ʽNo Love Lostʼ calls for cleaner singing, but
perhaps they were too afraid to bring in clean vocals, thinking that it would
make them sound like Queensryche or something. Also, in terms of instrumentation
and arrangements, the album is surprisingly less
diverse than Necroticism: there's no
special effects, no sampled overdubs, no acoustic interludes, absolutely
nothing to draw your attention away from the basic riff — solo — riff — solo
patterns.
Although the vocals go so far in the mainstream
direction as to sometimes arrange themselves in verse/chorus patterns, it is
pretty hard to apply the term «catchy» to any
vocal «melody» that sounds as if it were delivered by Satan suffering from
acute constipation. However, the riffs are fairly strong and could easily
withstand competition with any sophisticated classic thrash or death metal band
— ʽNo Love Lostʼ, ʽEmbodimentʼ, the stop-and-start tricks on ʽDoctrinal
Expletivesʼ all qualify, and these are only the slower ones; the faster ones,
like ʽBlind Bleeding The Blindʼ, add breathtaking excitement without abandoning
the melodic angle. From a technical standpoint at least, the general quality of
the tunes — complexity of chord patterns, smoothness of transition from fast to
slow sections and back again, thoughtful construction of lead parts — leaves
little to be desired.
That said, it would be useless to deny a
certain amount of disappointment: now that Carcass are no longer really an
«extreme» band, they do fairly little to make the music stand out from the rest
of the competition. This is just normal, high-quality melodic death metal with
faint echoes of the band's original grotesque identity; in fact, we could
probably go as far as to state that this was the beginning of the end —
particularly with Amott quitting soon after the album's release to form Arch
Enemy. The fact that the band retains its penchant for morbid song title puns
like ʽArbeit Macht Fleischʼ (good name for a B movie about zombie-infestated
concentration camps) and ʽBlind Bleeding The Blindʼ does little to conceal the
fact that they are attempting to get serious,
and maybe the last thing this world needs is Carcass being serious. Still, as
long as the riffage is that good (although I couldn't even begin to describe
the particular ways in which it is good without turning into a certified
metalhead), and as long as they sound so excited about finding new ways to
upgrade their image, thumbs up are in order.
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