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Reek of Putrefaction

Carcass - Reek of Putrefaction Audio CD

A fair review of the Carcass "Reek of Putrefaction" 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: Reek of Putrefaction
Rating:

Release Date: 2008-10-28
Media: Audio CD

Tracks: 1: Genital Grinder [Instrumental] 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: Oxidised Razor Masticator 21: Mucopurulence Excretor 22: Malignant Defecation

Gross Cover, Great Album
Unlike your sophisticated modern death metal albums, this is a senselessly brutal, simplistic mass of grinding noise. "The Onset of Putrefaction" is impossible to intelligently defend from any rational standpoint. Even in this remastered form, the guitars and bass meld into a single distorted mass overlaying the spastic, primitive drumming. Little will likely stick with you after listening. In short, I describe it in precisely the way that critics would deride grindcore generally, and in precisely the way that I would critcize grindcore albums that I don't like.

And yet this album is awesome. It's an absurdly energetic, infectious release that is still truly brutal 20 years after the original release, and also one of the funnest extreme metal albums I've ever heard. All of the Carcass releases after this, even SoS, are a bit overly sterile and calculated. Reek of Putrefaction, however, is unadulterated intensity, an album driven by the force of sound alone. Not songs, not even riffs. Just aural force.

A classic. Mandatory listening for all extreme metal fans.

The Infamous debut
It is a LO-FI masterpiece (its master tape was a beta cartridge!). This is what John Peel declared album of the year back in 1988. The debut of the most challenging extreme rock group of all time, the one & only CARCASS. Do not try to comprehend, do not try to sing along, just sit back and let this slab of definitive grind pummel your eardrums into submission.

Not remastered!
Iggy managed to do it with Raw Power, so these yobs have no excuse. How Carcass and Earache could pass up the opportunity to actually remaster this groundbreaking album boggles the mind. Yes this is a great album, but its masterpiece-like qualities could have been cemented by a good remastering. Even the band were deeply unhappy with the original mix (this fact has been stated repeatedly in the music press), and this reissue, despite Amazon's claim of "Original Recording Remastered" still sounds like it was mixed with teacups over the engineer's ears. Why does this re-release exist? Probably to capitalize on the band's recent reunion tour and to milk hardcore fans (like myself) with the promise of a better-sounding version of this classic album. Also included is an early demo and a DVD documentary which may sweeten the pot for some.

The definitive splatter-core masterpiece
In the worldwide death metal scene that was just in its infant stages at the time, Carcass were something truly new and never before heard. Repulsion are rightly considered the true originators of grindcore and for good reason, but in 1987 three young Brits took their influence and made things just a bit faster, a bit gorier and ultimately even more brutal, if that were possible. They were almost unclassifiable, and were lumped in with the burgeoning "Brit-core" scene of the time (descended from hardcore punk) that included the likes of an early Napalm Death, Extreme Noise Terror, Electro Hippies, Unseen Terror and Intense Degree. This was partly due to the band's vegan beliefs and politics that hearkened back to earlier British anarcho-punk bands such as Crass and Conflict. In short, Carcass were highly intelligent guys whose music had a hidden political message of abstinence from a meat-based diet, and were far from out only to headbang (though I'm sure they did a fair amount of that too). They were throughout their career a thinking man's version of death metal.

If you want to look back even further than "Reek Of Putrefaction" into the band's origins, I highly recommend that you seek out the Carcass demo compilation CD put out within the last couple years "The Gore Gallery Of Demos" which contains the band's debut 1987 tape "Flesh Ripping Sonic Torment," which features original vocalist Sanjiv, and he is no doubt one of the absolute originators of the endlessly imitated guttural death metal gurgle.

By December of 1987 though, when the band entered Birmingham's Rich Bitch studios to record "Reek Of Putrefaction," he was gone and guitarist Bill Steer took over on low growls and proved to be a more than competent replacement.

What a classic this record is. Those who complain of the poor production may in fact be missing the point. You have to take this in its original context as an LP. It was MEANT to be as sonically repulsive and horrific as its original cover art (a far cry from the squeaky-clean sanitized version that appears here on Amazon). It is the sound of pure audio vomit put to music. This is really gory guttural death metal at its absolute genesis that could only have been conceived in the minds of three genius teenage outcasts, and they were LIGHT YEARS ahead of their time people.

It's inconceivable how many bands' sounds stem from this one record. The work that would immediately follow this album's release (in the summer of 1988) from the likes of Sore Throat, Xysma, General Surgery, and Regurgitate all echoed the discordant wall of sound found on this LP.

One thing that's often understated about this recording is just how musically advanced these guys already were even at this early stage. If you doubt, witness Steer's brilliant guitar interludes on tracks like "Burnt To A Crisp" and "Oxidised Razor Masticator. "

Far too extreme for its time, "Reek" was never even given the liberty of being released on a CD by itself in its entirety until a full seven years after it was recorded, and even then, without the essential original sleeve art as I said (Earache finally wised up and reissued it with the original covers in 2002).

All in all, if you are at all into gore or death metal, you need to own this album. An all-time personal favorite.

The begining of gore...
I can see why some people dont like this kind of music or gore in generall. . Its not for every one but anyways, carcass's reek of putrefaction was the begining of something wonderfull i like to call goregrind. Pure sickness.

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.