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Heartwork

Carcass - Heartwork Audio CD

A fair review of the Carcass "Heartwork" Audio CD. Please note that the below review is the views of the authors, and authors only. You can get a complete list of all Carcass reviews here, or go back to the Carcass tabs.

Band: Carcass
Title: Heartwork
Rating:

Release Date: 2004-09-07
Media: Audio CD

Tracks: 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

Smart, Beautiful, Angry, and Awesome
With the weekend off I switched on "Headbangers Ball". I'll never forget the weekend off from military school in 1994 that I first heard Carcass. I missed the credit intro, but while the tv warmed up I could hear the beginning guitar harmonies of "Heartwork". I couldn't believe what I was hearing. It was the heaviest most a$$ kicking yet melodic and angry music I had ever heard. And then that voice came punching through the speakers like a person whom had enough of corrupt society and was going to let you know about it. I have been forever hooked from the point on.

This album was a break through for the deathmetal/grind genre. Bill Steer, Jeff Walker, Ken Owen, and Michael Amott went to another dimension with this album. Producer Colin Richardson cleaned up the sound for this record generating the sonic punch the band and the genre deserved. For a long time Death metal had been plagued and discredited for lame and shoty production and mixing. This album proved that the genre was indeed just as, if not more, creditable technically and melodically as any other music. Carcass proved Death Metal can be a joy to listen to when properly produced, engineered, and mixed.

Michael and Bill proved a powerful team for the band and this album. Bill has a more laid back and organic approach that allow the vocals to be front and center while it balances out Amott's technical and orchestrated hooks. Ken's drum work righteously serves the melody lines and never distracts from the modal machinations of Steer and Amott. Jeff's voice adds the vocal edge the music deserves and his bass lines compliment every chord progression while at the same time adding dynamics both harmonically and rhythmically with every beat of percussion.

This album is a very raw yet precise representation of Carcass and what the genre should be. Carcass possessed an attitude, intellect, and integrity that served death metal very well and has yet to be duplicated. I recommend this album to any serious musician, composer, or music lover. 5 stars!.

a crowning death metal acheivement
they did the best thing they could they looked around slowed down took a lession for sabbath grooves and the technical style from death matal progessive bands and charted into unheard of territory becoming the best of the grindcore lot and made a striat forward brutally heavy masterpiece. thier cd proved that grindcore/deathmetal didn't have to be a blur of noize to be brutal or heavy.

Love it or hate it, this IS Carcass's magnum opus!
Indeed, if you lean more toward grindcore or the whole underground metal thing, that release is probably more up your alley. First off, the title should take nothing away from Necroticism - Descanting the Insalubrious.

However, for what Napalm Death's "Scum" did for grindcore, this album did for melodic/Scandinavian death metal. The guitar tandem of Michael Amott and Bill Steer is beyond legendary and perhaps maybe even unfair to other metal artists. In fact, had the drummer be a little more proficient, I would say this is the most complete metal band since early Metallica, and even then, not too many drummers were playing blastbeats back in the day, so good for Ken Owen.

So what do you get with the record? So much. In fact, too much. I could see why this was their last album which was supported. Once Amott left the band, there wasn't going to be anything the group could release that would have topped this. Swansong is good for what it is, but it's not Heartwork.

To all the guys who say this album points to "selling out", I have to contend you're either arrogant, ignorant, or prejudiced to being "tr00 to metal" to realize how significant this album was at the time it was released. I recommend this album to ALL metalheads and music fans who want to see what good death metal sounds like.

Carcass sell out album? Who cares
This CD really hits the spot if you want something heavy. Why does it matter if they changed their sound, I personally didn't like their earlier goregrind style anyway. I like the black metal like harsh vocals. It took me a few listens to really appreciate this album, at first the guitar might seem a little repetitive, but they mix it up during the songs. My favorite is Arbeit Macht Fleisch. Lots of hardcore riffs and they don't overdo it with the solos. .

A Blueprint For Selling Out
Start with a band with artistic credibility (say, one that had released two of the most influential and widely praised grindcore albums of all time).
You want a blow-by-blow guide to selling out by the numbers? Well then, Heartwork is the model for you. Remove every violent, feral and interesting element from the band's classic sound, and replace them with banal borrowings from mainstream bestsellers. Rinse, wash, repeat.

The initial impression (and, as it turns out, the correct impression) of Heartwork is one of overwhelming sterility: from the riffs to the production to the album packaging (with its mechanically dull Giger museum installation and pristinely readable logo), Heartwork screams (or is that mutters?) 'bland. '

For the most part, the album is content to bounce along at a comfortably rockin' groove, venturing out of the mid-paced rut only to make occasional gestures in the direction of Mike Amott's Stockholm past. In fact, much of the riffing more reminiscent of Countdown to Extinction/Youthenasia-era Megadeth than any of the band's previous work, and the production values evoke similar comparisons, straddling as they do Bob Rock's work with Metallica and the hollow, scooped out guitar tone of Pantera. Phrasing is depressingly short, and, despite the 'melodic death metal' tag often applied to this album, the emphasis is definitely on rhythmic resolution rather than on the construction of melody (not to mention liberal politics rather than death). What emerges is death metal/rock hybrid that might be best understood as an attempt to position Carcass as an 'underground' alternative to early/mid 90s MTV metal.

Heartwork's lead work is pure rock 'n roll cheese, as is the percussion. The solos are technically impressive, but their combination of been-there-done-that pentatonic scale fragments and open, consonant harmonizing is both painfully corny and an obvious pander. Drums follow the tried-and-true path of a simple back beat ornamented with unnecessarily showy fills. Vocals seem patterned on mid-period Death, barking out unremarkable social commentary in simple, sing-song cadences. Pedestrian, unremarkable, inoffensive. . . BORING.

While none of the individual elements in and of itself could be called 'bad,' when taken as a whole Heartwork is a dismal failure. The underlying weakness of the album is a lack of any unifying ideal. Instead, Carcass offer an ill-fitting array of ideas scavenged from other bands, flavored with the fetid spice of underconfidence and artistic compromise. As a result, Heartwork sounds more like the product of some focus group sitting around eating Big Macs under the fluorescent glare of an airless corporate boardroom than the work of the band who gave the world The Reek of Putrefaction and Symphonies of Sickness, and more like Muzak than grind or death metal. Avoid.

You can see a complete list of all Carcass discography, or go back to the Carcass tabs. There is also a good guide on how to read guitar tabs here.