Only Solitaire: G. Starostin's Record Reviews, Reloaded c intro Notes
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- CARCASS
- SYMPHONIES OF SICKNESS (1989)
- NECROTICISM - DESCANTING THE INSALUBRIOUS (1991)
- Necroticism
- Swansong
THE CONVERSATION (1994) 1) Exterminating Angel (Intro); 2) Brutal But Clean; 3) The Message; 4) Let's Start; 5) Night Rider; 6) I Think; 7) The Heat; 8) Harmonic Parallel; 9) Project80; 10) Exterminating Angel (Outro). Although this is still credited to Cabaret Voltaire, the liner notes explicitly state that the album was "composed, programmed, arranged, and sonically orchestrated by R. H. Kirk", so apparently Mallinder's involvement here was minimal at best — not that you'd really notice, considering that his trademark vocals had been completely absent on the previous two records as well; and truly, there is not a lot of stylistic difference between all three, except for maybe this Conversation showing an even more claustrophobic spirit than ever before. What the album is really most notable for, though, is its duration — spread across two CDs, with the second one largely consisting of a single 53-minute long collage, ʻProject80ʼ, featuring long samples of movie dialog interpolated with industrial clang-a-bang. The track actually sounds closer in spirit to «classic» Cabaret Voltaire than anything they'd done in a long time, except that there are no signs of returning to a guitar sound — but the effort is on gray dirty noise rather than danceable patterns, with the atmosphere changing from industrial to militaristic to post-stormy ambient and back again several times. It's a bit of an excruciating listen, but perhaps it is acceptable as a last testament of sorts, a pompous reappraisal of the Cabaret Voltaire legacy and all the emotional turmoil it represents for easily impressionable people. Neither its individual parts, though, nor the much shorter tracks on the first CD lend themselves any easier to description than any bits and pieces on International Language. The two-part ʻExterminating Angelʼ may own its title to a Buñuel movie, but it is neither as suspenseful nor as bizarre as its filmed counterpart — just a set of cloudy tape loops generating a mixed atmosphere of serenity and faraway ominous danger, with percussion overdubs added in the «outro» part so you can dance to the atmosphere of serenity and faraway ominous danger. Likewise, everything else works like smooth, inobtrusive, barely noticeable background muzak that seems to gravitate towards «chill-out» now out of its original «acid» inclinations. Occasionally, there's a touch of something different (ʻThe Heatʼ reworks a reggae groove; ʻHarmonic Parallelʼ lazily stutters along to a relaxed trip-hop beat), but some of the keyboard loops are downright cheesy — the one on ʻBrutal But Cleanʼ sounds like something Modern Talking could find some use for. In other words, the small highs are balanced by equally small lows, and most of the time you get bland background neutrality. In fact, considering that Kirk's solo albums from the same period, recorded for Warp, are more adventurous on the whole, it is somewhat of a relief that he and Mallinder finally pulled the plug on the Cabaret Voltaire thing later that year. Let's face it — the CV spirit got old and debilitated by the late Eighties, and despite a few last-minute shots of darkness that they tried to administer for Body And Soul, this whole techno thing that they got going in the Nineties was not proper Cabaret Voltaire — and proper Cabaret Voltaire was so tightly bound to the New Wave and mid-Eighties era that there was no way they could artificially stimulate it for a long time anyway. Obviously, if there's something they are going to be remembered by, it will be those albums where Kirk is grinding out his creepy-nasty guitar cobwebs and Mallinder is running from phantom dangers through smelly underground sewers. Anything that comes later, no matter how inoffensive or even mildly creative, will be superfluous. CARCASS 
REEK OF PUTREFACTION (1988) 1) Genital Grinder; 2) Regurgitation Of Giblets; 3) Maggot Colony; 4) Pyosisified (Rotten To The Gore); 5) Carbonized Eyesockets; 6) Frenzied Detruncation; 7) Vomited Anal Tract; 8) Festerday; 9) Fermenting Innards; 10) Excreted Alive; 11) Suppuration; 12) Foeticide; 13) Microwaved Uterogestation; 14) Feast On Dismembered Carnage; 15) Splattered Cavities; 16) Psychopathologist; 17) Burnt To A Crisp; 18) Pungent Excruciation; 19) Manifestation Of Verrucose Urethra; 20) Oxidized Razor Masticator; 21) Mucopurulence Excretor; 22) Malignant Defecation. If you ever had any problems with the Liverpudlian accents of the Fab Four, try this for comfort: anybody capable of deciphering even a single word on Carcass' debut album without peeking into the lyrics sheet should probably be burned at the stake for serious witchcraft. Likewise, if you can commit even a single «melody» on this album to an individual memory cell, you should probably take immediate action to get yourself committed before the shit hits the fan. Meet bass player Jeffrey Walker, guitarist Bill Steer, and drummer Ken Owen, three friendly and (according to most sources) perfectly normal guys that, one day, set out on the quest of making the most disgusting rock album ever. The immediate influence here is the pioneering grindcore of Napalm Death, for whom Steer also played guitar (and Walker designed the art of their first album, Scum, just to indicate the sort of symbiotic relationship between the two) — but while Napalm Death concentrated more on the laconic-minimalistic side of things, Carcass took it into an, ahem, somewhat more anatomical direction. As you can see, you do not need to go further than the song titles — and a thorough study of the lyrics with a medical encyclopaedia by your side, accompanied by some unflinching staring at this and the ensuing album covers, will make you perfectly qualified for a job as morgue assistant without any real need for a college degree. The only thing in favor of this record is total commitment — but its totality is, in fact, so overwhelming that it translates to a certain kind of hip charm even in the minds of perfectly sane people (in fact, perfectly sane people are its base audience — it's not as if Carcass had a small, but loyal fanbase of mass murderers and necrophiliacs in mind). The band is unquestionably very tight and professional, but here it completely sacrifices skill to the idea of heaviness, speed, and «melodic blurriness», making Slayer sound like ABBA in comparison; and the vocals are an incomprehensible slurred growl all the way. For 37 minutes in a row, the record operates in two modes — fast and very fast, where all fast parts sound the same, all very fast parts sound the same, and the only difference between fast and very fast is... uh... tempo. One does have to somehow «accept» the whole package — music, voice, song titles, song lyrics, album art, etc. — for the experience to work. Of course, it's essentially an «anti-musical» joke, whose only serious point is testing the limits of personal and artistic freedom, something that John Peel must have understood very well when he called Carcass his favorite new band of 1988 and got them to appear on his show. Later on, the songs would become longer, more melodic and «musical», not to mention the production, which is pretty bad here, and, apparently, the band members themselves were unhappy with it, but with this kind of approach, lo-fi, dirty, and mean actually works best: I mean, when you name a song ʽVomited Anal Tractʼ, it better sound like a vomited anal tract, or else what's the frickin' point? It would hardly make sense to condemn the album with the «anybody could produce this kind of shit» argument, either. First, it takes some serious practice to become a top level grindcore artist. Second, it takes real guts (or, perhaps, in the spirit of the album, it takes some really fermented innards) to come up with such an uncompromising concept. Third, once you get around to reading the lyrics, they are really hilarious — probably some of the most verbose, poetic, inventive texts centered around complex human anatomy ever thought of by living man (not that I'm mentally prepared to analyze any of them here). Fourth, the sheer contrast between the personalities of the band members (who are nice-behaving vegetarians) and the «atrociousness» of the whole concept is somehow quite comforting — I'd certainly rather have that than comparable work of an actual madman like G. G. Allin. But clearly, there's no need to actually discuss the music; unlike later Carcass albums, the basic point of these songs is that even if they start out with actual chord sequences, the insane tempos mash them together in a grinder and the muddy production finishes the job. The idea is not to «hum» these songs, but to participate in a deranged, macabre dance of death — a fun thing to do, provided you do not accidentally blast these songs out of your car when passing near a hospice (and even if you do, you'd still have to drop leaflets with printed lyrics in the yard to achieve the necessary sacrilegious effect) or send out a complementary version of the CD to victims of nuclear meltdown accidents. I am not, by any means, giving this album a proper «thumbs up», but I certainly acknowledge not just its right to existence, but its actual artistic purpose. Besides, you could probably get an M.D., easy, with just a cursory analysis of the lyrics — or, at the very least, vastly expand your anatomical vocabulary. SYMPHONIES OF SICKNESS (1989) 1) Reek Of Putrefaction; 2) Exhume To Consume; 3) Excoriating Abdominal Emanation; 4) Ruptured In Purulence; 5) Empathological Necroticism; 6) Embryonic Necropsy And Devourment; 7) Swarming Vulgar Mass Of Infected Virulency; 8) Cadaveric Incubator Of Endoparasites; 9) Slash Dementia; 10) Crepitating Bowel Erosion. Already they are beginning to evolve. Arguably the best thing about Carcass is that, while the basic ideology of the band remains consistent throughout their career, (almost) no two albums by them sound the same — unlike so many of their metal peers, these guys could apparently get bored with formula real easy, and found it more fun to keep on experimenting with various ways they could get their Coroner's Message through to us. Here, we have the songs putting on some fat, sometimes expanding to gigantic, five-minute running time periods, and, more importantly, a huge quantum leap in production values, so you can occasionally distinguish rhythm from lead guitar, and — oh horrors! — ever so often, even discern a necrolyrical bit or two. And while this makes the experience somewhat less extreme and grotesque (a danger in itself, because the only way to take Carcass seriously is to lack the bare means to take them seriously), you actually get to appreciate their skills a bit more. There are passages here that are individually memorable — for instance, the slow, riff-based introduction to ʽRuptured In Purulenceʼ, one minute of intense thrash brutality with clever alternation of continuous and «ruptured» (sorry) melody. Eventually, they pick up speed and launch into the usual messy pandemonium, but the introduction has already managed to plant a seed of respectability. Or, if you take the opening number ʽReek Of Putrefactionʼ (add this to our ever-growing collection of song titles that did not appear on the album with the same title), you will find it introduced by a spooky guitar intro that borrows the Tony Iommi vibe, especially in that little vibrato bit that seems directly copped from ʽBlack Sabbathʼ. Later on, the riff reappears doubled with a high-pitched doom-laden lead guitar part — well worth waiting for as your ears are treated to the usual slash-and-burn speed gallop in the interim. And although not all the tracks feature these melodic elements, and none of the tracks are «melodic» through and through, we are still clearly dealing with a desire to add a little bit more individuality and expressivity to the tracks. You'd think that ʽEmpathological Necroticismʼ and ʽEmbryonic Necropsyʼ should sound completely the same, but they don't. Well, not quite completely. That said, Symphonies Of Sickness is clearly a transitional album, and that's a risky state of affairs where, if the stars were lucky, you could satisfy everybody — or, if they weren't, nobody. The melodic bits really sound more like «teasers», sometimes entertaining you for very short bits as elementary separators of the sludgy verses; and the increased song length only rarely works for the better, because they aren't really expanding them into Metallica-style multi-part thrash anthems or anything like that, and there is still no way that they can make the speed-based grooves too distinct from each other. Eventually, even though the record is only slightly longer than its predecessor, it wears me out a bit faster, and the last three or four songs become just a tedious blur. But I can also see where hardcore fans of extreme metal would call this their favorite — because it does completely retain the insane-grotesque-evil aura, while seriously improving on the production; already the next record could be judged as a serious betrayal of faith by some of these people. In short, this is their «cleanest dirtiest» album, if you need a really brief summary. NECROTICISM - DESCANTING THE INSALUBRIOUS (1991) 1) Inpropagation; 2) Corporal Jigsaw Quandary; 3) Symposium Of Sickness; 4) Pedigree Butchery; 5) Incarnated Solvent Abuse; 6) Carneous Cacoffiny; 7) Lavaging Expectorate Of Lysergide Composition; 8) Forensic Clinicism / The Sanguine Article; 9*) Tools Of The Trade; 10*) Pyosified (Still Rotten To The Gore); 11*) Hepatic Tissue Fermentation II. This is where they finally realized that a proper metal band has to have two guitarists in order to achieve real respectability — and at least one should preferably be of Scandinavian origin, cuz there's nothing like a shot of thick Viking blood to add that authentic berserk component to your metal riffage. Thus, enter Michael Amott, a natural choice since his own recently formed Swedish band was called Carnage, and was essentially the Swedish equivalent of Carcass. The result was obvious — a more «melodic» (so to say) form of the music, with a separate lead player capable of adding colorful flourishes to the brutal riffs and dutifully churning out speedy-flashy classical-influenced solos where deemed necessary. Now the band was finally set up to produce their equivalent of Slayer's Reign In Blood, if it really wanted to. Indeed, the record is far more ambitious. The songs are lightly adorned with special effects (including occasional voiceovers that are probably sampled from obscure B-movies, or an occasional atmospheric synthesizer backdrop, or even a tiny bit of acoustic guitar now and then), the song structures become even more complex and now regularly alternate between Sabbathy slow and ultra-fast, and then there's all that lead guitar. If not for the lyrics, this would have been just a regular speed-thrash-whatever-mash-up — the lyrics, however, stubbornly persist in this grotesque fascination with the morgue, as the album is formally organized around the concept of finding various ways of dispensing with corpses (both out of practical necessity and as a hobby). The problem is that it is completely impossible to seriously praise the record in «layman» terms. The musical structures of these tunes, some of which now run for as long as six or seven minutes, clearly seem «progressive» — the band is now approaching their music as actual music, rather than mere noisy backdrop for staged offensiveness, and all the compositions work as compositions; in fact, sometimes I think I'd much rather listen to the instrumental versions without having to divert attention towards the growling vocals that really sound the same all the way through, not just in style and timbre, but even in simple phrasing. Compared to the vocals, the instrumental work is far more demanding — the riffs are more complex than Metallica's and the shifts between multiple sections are flawlessly executed. But the riffs also do not lend themselves easily to «visualization» — for the life of me I couldn't even begin to explain in what way the emotional impact of ʽPedigree Butcheryʼ differs from that of ʽCarneous Cacoffinyʼ. At the same time, we should also keep in mind that Carcass were far from the only metal band experimenting with the limits of the genre — and if they did not have that particular anatomical-pathological schtick of theirs, chances are serious that Necroticism would have been completely lost in the sea of high-profile, technically accomplished metal releases from around the year 1991. So perhaps the best news here is that the original «spirit of Carcass», despite all the increased complexity, is still loyally preserved, and that it adds the necessary shade of theatrical gore to the music. No, scratch «gore» — it adds the necessary shade of macabre fun to the music, which is the perfect aural equivalent of indulging in your dark side when splattering your opponent's brains (or other parts) against the wall in a fighting video game. Of course, it goes without saying that, in the light of this, Necroticism should only be recommended for people with good mental health — so, if you happen to have Charlie Manson in your family history, please disregard this thumbs up and submit yourself to preventive therapy in the form of my Avril Lavigne reviews or something like that. 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. SWANSONG (1995) 1) Keep On Rotting In The Free World; 2) Tomorrow Belongs To Nobody; 3) Black Star; 4) Cross My Heart; 5) Childs Play; 6) Room 101; 7) Polarized; 8) Generation Hexed; 9) Firm Hand; 10) R**k The Vote; 11) Don't Believe A Word; 12) Go To Hell. Well, I totally agree with the fans that Swansong can hardly even begin to be considered a proper Carcass album. Where are the insane tempos? Where's the guitar/bass/drum madness? Where are the gory lyrics? Pretty much the only thing that somehow ties this record to everything that was before are the growling vocals, and even these are constantly in danger of becoming comprehensible — this is arguably the first Carcass album where you can generally make out what the songs are about, and many of them are about... social protest and disillusionment... oh wait... are these guys turning into Bad Religion or what??? Not surprisingly, the album often gets negative marks from metalhead fans and critics alike, because, well, those who want their Bad Religion can have it, and those who want their kick-ass melodic heavy metal à la Accept can have it, but this is like a total frickin' sellout — and, in fact, it was almost going to be official, since after the success of Heartwork Carcass, with new guitar player Carlo Regadas replacing Michael Amott (who went off to start Arch Enemy), were all set to go big, signing up with Columbia. Eventually, much to the relief of the indie metal crowd, the deal fell through, and they returned to Earache records; but in the meantime, the band members managed to spoil their mutual relationship, Bill Steer kind of got bored with the whole metal business, and by the time they mopped up the sessions, the group was pretty much finished. That said, if you look at the general evolution of Carcass music, Swansong seems like a perfectly logical conclusion. Arguable as it is, I'd still say that it contains their most «naturally-sounding» and memorable set of tunes, even if it comes at the expense of downplaying the shock factor almost to zero level and dropping the search for innovative production techniques and melodic layerings. A single example may suffice — the main riff of ʽBlack Starʼ, sounding like a nasty shrapnel run from a low-cruisin' airplane, seems far more evocative to me than anything on Heartwork, let alone all those earlier and messier tunes. It may be a minus, yes, that the track quickly begins to sound like a solid, but derivative imitation of Iron Maiden; but this will only lead us into the uncomfortable depths of discussing what matters more — quality/memorability or innovation/individuality — and I'd like to avoid that discussion in a set of Carcass reviews. Anyway, at least they do not lose their sense of punny humor (ʽKeep On Rotting In The Free Worldʼ, ʽGeneration Hexedʼ), and at least these good riffs and melodic solos keep coming, even if I could totally see ʽGeneration Hexedʼ sung cleanly by Accept's Udo Dirkschneider and its riffs cracked out by Wolf Hoffmann — and most other songs are like a mish-mash of various metal substyles, from Metallica-Megadeth thrash to the British New Wave (the band themselves mentioned Thin Lizzy as one of the influences at the time, although this is certainly not the first association that is going to jump into your head). Actually, at this point the growling vocals in general are an unfortunate atavistic compromise — songs like ʽRoom 101ʼ, with its mad prophet tale, were made to be sung cleanly: I close my eyes and try to imagine what would Ronnie James Dio have done with it, and once I do, the actual version begins to sound like a death metal parody of an unpreserved Dio track. In fact, with a cleaner approach, Swansong would have made for a very impressive collection of «protest-metal» tunes — the melodies of songs like ʽTomorrow Belongs To Nobodyʼ have enough thunder and snap to them to sound convincing, and I cannot for the life of me regard Steer's and Walker's songwriting here as throwaway songwriting (well, apparently while they were writing the tunes and making the original recordings, nobody thought as of yet that this would be the band's last album). Blame it on the general narrowness of the metal formula that the record, stripped of the band's traditional grossness, sounds monotonous and devoid of individuality — a flaw that would have been more forgivable on an old school pop record, perhaps. But as long as you're cool with that general formula, Swansong should be a thumbs up all the way, and a perfect way to switch off one's career: now that the band has «matured» to the state of complete adulthood, there's no way further but down, and disbanding was the most natural thing to do. Directory: music music -> Polish and Scottish modern music music -> How to Create a Student Recital Program music -> Arthur houle pianist music -> +44 When Your Heart Stops Beating 1 Giant Leap – 1 Giant Leap 1 Love 10 Years Of Israeli Trance music -> Music List Please Note : Latest Stuff At Bottom Of List albums a-z # music -> Introductory material must include the following music -> Cantus firmus: a few guidelines music -> Singing for action on climate change London 21 September 2014 Global People’s Climate March We are people from Raised Voices and other political choirs. For contact and information music -> Curriculum vitae daniel allen weymouth Download 1.07 Mb. Share with your friends:
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