CARCASS – Torn Arteries review

 

CARCASS – Torn Arteries

Nuclear Blast

I've said it before but it always bares repeating. There are three types of CARCASS fans. First off you've got the early die-hard goregrind fans. Next up you've got the death metal heads who cite Necroticism as the band's best. I fall into that category. Third and final are those fans who came on board with the band's more accessible melodic album, Heartwork from 1993. I won't talk about it's follow up Swan Song.

So in 2013, after a semi retirement and reunion tour, the band came back with Surgical Steel. This album laid heavy on the past Heartwork type of style with a few grains of Necroticism and Symphonies of Sickness thrown in. Like I prefaced earier I'm a huge fan of Necroticism and their first two albums. So Surgical Steel is not a CARCASS album I tend to reach for too often or Swan Song for that matter.

Now here we are eight years later with their new one Torn Arteries. First off I do like this one over Surgical Steel. This album comes across just like their live set for the Surgical Steel tour did. It's a little bit of everything from their career boiled down into one album. Now that's not to say they picked one song style from this era, picked another style from somewhere else and so on. No instead the album is all in the character of CARCASS. 

I guess a better way to describe this album is that CARCASS took what they do best and tweaked it a bit. Dare I say "progressed"? I'm not going to dive into all the songs or individual attributes but there's some cool things going on here. Bill Steer gets to trade vocals again with Jeff Walker. As for Walker vocals he sounds perfect. The drum work by Daniel Wilding is dynamic. Steer also gets plenty of killer solos into the mix. In the end I'd say this is their best album since Necroticism.

https://www.nuclearblast.com/eu/

LISTEN HERE:

https://carcass.bandcamp.com/album/torn-arteries