Carcass

(Translated from my original Italian text by ChatGPT and Piero Scaruffi)

Carcass were formed in Liverpool in the mid-1980s by guitarist Bill Steer (future Napalm Death) and drummer Ken Owen. In 1987, bassist and vocalist Jeff Walker, a student of anatomy who therefore had the cultural background to describe the worst atrocities, joined Steer and Owen.

Their first album, Reek Of Putrefaction (Earache, 1988), is a milestone in the fusion of grindcore and death, a colossal (22 tracks) horror in music. The stench of death looms over the entire work, from the disgusting sneer of Maggot Colony to the rabid babbling of Vomited Anal Tract, through Excreted Alive and Malignant Defecation, across a gallery of ever more horrid verses and ever more ferocious harmonies. When the slaughter slows down, from the rubble a thread of melody and even a hint of instrumental imagination (Pyosisified) can peek out. The epileptic Foeticide and the deranged dance of Feast On Dismembered Carnage are among the wildest orgies. The tracks are tiny bursts�just the time for a gag reflex and a flurry of blows, two curses and a chord machine-gunned without mercy. Walker sang like a zombie still chewing on a chunk of flesh torn from a corpse, with worms crawling into his nostrils and blood pouring copiously from his chin. Given the album�s success, Steer decided to devote himself exclusively to Carcass.

Symphony Of Sickness (1989) continues in the same vein, better produced and once again made infamous by titles as grandiose as they are revolting (Excoriating Abdominal Emanation, Swarming Vulgar Mass Of Infected Virulency, and so on). Among macabre incantations (Reek Of Putrefaction), slogans for zombies (Exhume To Consume), from a flamenco for cannibals (Embryonic Necropsy And Devourment) to a titanic battle of panzers (Crepitating Bowel Erosion), all characterized by breakneck instrumental runs and Walker�s subsonic grunt, there emerged a worldview that is a nightmare of apocalyptic scope, where all the fears of the modern metropolis converge and where the daily atrocities of an England on the brink of socio-economic collapse are transfigured. Their music could be defined by the title of one of their songs: Empathological Necroticism. The lyrics, however, remain the quintessence of the most puerile macabre fantasies.

Carcass perhaps found the right balance on Necroticism: Descanting The Insalubrious (1991), with Mike Amott (ex-Carnage) on second guitar and tracks running six minutes or more. Not only are Impropagation and Forensic Clinicism among their most musical works, but this time some passages are truly epic. Symposium Of Sickness delivers the usual barrages of atrocities. The lyrics, however, remain firmly anchored to ultra-horror imagery. "And there's still no rest for the dead." Literally.

The more thoughtful death metal of that album progressed further toward less gruesome sounds and themes on Heartwork (Earache, 1994): especially Buried Dreams, No Love Lost, the title track, and Death Certificate seem to establish a new melodic standard for the genre. It�s a pop-metal album with a little extra frenzy and �gore.�

Swansong (Earache, 1996) thus renounces the band�s entire career with songs like Black Star and Go to Hell, returning precisely to the progressive heavy metal that grindcore had set out to demolish. A bit like if Che Guevara had joined the right-wing party.

Wake Up And Smell (Earache, 1996) is an anthology that also includes previously unreleased material from the Swansong sessions.

Compared to them, the Grand Guignol was a serious art form.