(Brief preface as a thank you: I want to thank first of all my buddy Erichk, thanks to whom I got hold of a masterpiece, which I probably would never have been able to hear without him, given the elevated price of €19 at my trusted store. Thank you buddy, stay brutal!)
Can you imagine that great joker Giorg Dabbliù Busssh who, suddenly struck by a flash of madness (or civil reasoning, as you may see it), puts on a turban, takes the Kalashnikov, goes to Iraq and announces he wants to fight American civilization in the name of Communism and to kill all "the dirty capitalists who live like parasites on Earth"?
Can you imagine that?
No? How come?
If you can't imagine it, then how can you imagine four grindsters dedicated to playing the most absurd, fast, uncompromising, poorly recorded Grind, of course spiced with disgustingly splatter themes, suddenly switching to the most melodic and thoughtful Death Metal, with more philosophical lyrics aimed at analyzing the Human in its Depths, Love, War, Peace, leaving aside post-anesthesia vomit and purulent infections of those lovely things (I'm only referring to female things, eh!) found between everyone's legs?
Can you imagine that?
No? How come?
The fact is that I also struggled to believe it, until this masterpiece landed in my ears.
Melodic, croaking Death Metal, recorded in a Grind style (hence poorly), disconcerting given the transformation carried out by the four.
One of the most influential Death Metal albums, "Heartwork," the band's masterpiece (aside from the previous Grind rubbish that doesn't really belong to me), was born in 1993, when melodic Death Metal was unheard of, as the Death bands of that time (good times) were busy competing among themselves over who could beat more double hits in a second and who had the deepest and hoarse growl.
Carcass revolutionized everything, they took the most aggressive and violent Death Metal and mixed it, true geniuses, with more melodic elements, with stronger Heavy influences, giving rise to a new branch of our favorite genre, which began to be commonly called "Melodic Death Metal": a genre that Carcass, after inventing it, passed the baton to numerous Swedish bands that perfected it and made it increasingly elaborate up to the monstrous levels of today, making Sweden the most fertile ground for bands of the caliber of In Flames, Dark Tranquillity, and Opeth, just to name a few examples.
Right from the first notes, you immediately perceive the incredible transformation of the band: not purely Grind blast beats, but slow, thoughtful tempos, infused with goosebump-inducing guitars: the opener "Buried Dreams" quickly became an explanatory song, with a guitar solo clearly deriving from the priest school that remains among the best I have ever heard.
The Slayer-like "Carnal Forge," perhaps the song that strays the least from the group's transformation while still maintaining melody but incorporating a typically "Kingiano" riff and breathtaking drums that leave you without thought, spiced with a lyric that has very little to envy from the good old days of playing purulent Grind, followed by two pieces "to pass on to posterity" (quoting Norvheim): these are "No Love Lost" and the title track, the best song of the bunch, which makes me break out in a cold sweat at every listen, makes the hairs on my neck stand up, and thrills me as few other songs do, also thanks to a solo that instead of being described should simply be listened to; following "Heartwork" are six other masterpieces, among which the incredibly violent "Arbeit Macht Fleisch," the furious "Blind Bleeding The Blind," and the excellent concluding "Death Certificate" stand out.
Incredible, magnificent, moving. This is "Heartwork," and if tomorrow morning you wake up and see on the news that the amiable Giorg is in a Taliban fortress, let your mind wander to the grindsters Carcass and think: "Yes, in this world, anything is indeed possible...".

Tracklist Lyrics and Videos

01   Buried Dreams (03:59)

Welcome, it's a world of hate
Your life of buried dreams
Smothered, by the soils of fate

Welcome, to a world of pain
Bitterness your only wealth
The sands of time kicked in your face
-Rubbed in your face

When aspirations are squashed
When life's chances are lost
When all hope is gone
When expectations are quashed
When self esteem is lost
When ambition is mourned
...All you need is hate

When aspirations are squashed
When life's chances are lost
When all hope is gone
When expectations are quashed
When self esteem is lost
When ambition is mourned
...All you need is hate

In futility, for self preservation
We all need someone
-Someone to hate

(1st lead - Steer)
(2nd lead - Amott)

Welcome to a world of hate

When aspirations are squashed
When life's chances are lost
When all hope is gone
When expectations are quashed
When self esteem is lost
When ambition is mourned
...All you need is hate

02   Carnal Forge (03:55)

Multifarious carnage
Meretriciously internecine
Sublime enmangling steelbath
Of escheated atrocities

Enigmatic longanimity of ruminent mass graves
Meritorious victory, into body-bags now scraped...

Regnant fleshpiles
The dead regorged
Osculatory majestic wrath
This carnal forge

Desensitized - to perspicuous horror
Dehumanized - fresh cannon fodder...

Meritorious horror
Perspicuous onslaught
Dehumanized - cannon fodder

Killing sanitized
Slaughter sanctified
Desensitized - to genocide

Reigning corpsepiles
Death regorged

Sousing bloodbath
Carnage forged...

In the cold, callous dignity of the mass grave...

Multiferocious carnage
Cruel, mendacious creed
Sublime, murderous bloodbath
Of fiscal atrocities

Inexorable mettle in redolent consomme
An opprobious crucible of molten human waste...

Priapismic deathpiles
Infinitely regorged
The smelting butchery
Of the carnal forge

Desensitized - to pragmatic murder
Dehumanized - into cannon fodder...

03   No Love Lost (03:22)

Sensual awakening,
Numbing feeling's dead,
Conception's romanticised,
Synthetized broken heart's to bled,

Without emotion, your heartstring's played,
Strummed and severed to the tune of a tragic serenade,
(A tragic chorus,)
Without emotion, your hearstrings break,
Snapped and severed to the tune of a tragic, sad-cliche.

No love lost,
When all is said and done,
There's no love lost.

The low cost of loving,
Amorous travesty,
Human frailties and weakness are easy prey,
How your poor heart will bleed.

04   Heartwork (04:33)

Works of art
Painted black
Magniloquent
Bleeding dark
Monotonous palate
Murky spectrum
Grimly unlimited
Food for thought
So prolific
In contrasting shades
Forcely fed
Abstraction, so choking
So provocative

A canvas to paint
To degenerate
Dark reflections
Degeneration
A canvas to paint
To denigrate
Dark reflections
Of dark foul light

Profound, aesthetic beauty
Or shaded, sensary corruption
Perceptions, shattered
Splintered, mirroring
In deft taints, diluted, tinted
Spelt out, in impaired colour
Denigrating, to paint
Not a pretty picture

A canvas to paint
To degenerate
Dark reflections
Degeneration
A canvas to paint
To denigrate
Dark reflections
Of dark foul

Works of heart bleeding dark
Black, magniloquent art
Monotonous palate
Murky spectrum
Grimly unlimited
Prolific food for thought
Contrasting, fed with force
Abstraction, so choking
So provocative

Bleeding works of art
Seething work so dark
Seering words from the heart

-Solo-

A canvas to paint
To degenerate
Dark reflections
Degeneration
A canvas to paint
To denigrate
Dark reflections
Of dark foul

-Solo-

A canvas to paint
To degenerate
Dark reflections
Degeneration
A canvas to paint
To denigrate
Dark reflections
Of dark foul light

05   Embodiment (05:36)

Bow down, your precious icon
Deity of self suppression
This effigy of flesh
Corporeal christi, nailed
In submission
To this false idol
Seeking deliverance
From this spiritual hierarchy
Downward spiralling
A corrupt throne
Of repression and guilt

Our will be done
Thy kingdom burn

On my knees
Before this tormented flesh
In irreverence
In communion with
This parasitic host
Of virtuous divinity
This imperious creed bears
Testament to the
Failures of our morality
Righteous durance
Is our cross we
Bear in stations
In stations of the lost

Our will be done
Thy kingdom burn
Thy kingdom burn
Our will be done

From your knees arise
By your own hand
Your god you scribe
The earth shall
Inherit the meek
Your god is dead

-Solo-

Bound down
In god we're trussed
Foul stature
Icons embodied in flesh
We nail
In servitude to deities
Fashioned in our self image
Shadows of eternal strife
Cast by those who serve
A crown of pawns

Our will be done
Thy kingdom burn
Thy kingdom burn
Our will be done

From your knees arise
By your own hand
Your god you scribe
The earth shall
Inherit the meek
Your god is dead

-Solo-

06   This Mortal Coil (03:50)

Tearing down the walls
Breaching frontiers
Unlocking the gates
To a new world disorder
A fresh balance of terror,
The equilibrium of hate

Archaic nescience unleashed
Entrenched, a bitter legacy
Tempered in mental scars
All flesh entwined
In mortal equality

Tangled mortal coil!

Twisted and warped!
Tangled mortal coil!

Tearing down the walls
Breaching frontiers
Unlocking the gates
To a new world disorder
A fresh balance of terror,
The equilibrium of hate

Twisted and warped!
Tangled mortal coil!

07   Arbeit macht Fleisch (04:21)

Prognathous gears grind
So diligent and serrated they mesh
Toothed cogs churn
So trechant, against soft flesh
Worked to the bone
Up to the hilt, depredated
Raw materialism
To stoke the furnaces
Toiling, rotting
Life slowly slips away
Consumed, inhumed
In this mechanized corruption line
By mincing machinery industrialised - pulped and pulverised
Enslaved to the grind

Blood, sweat, toil, tears
Arbeit macht frei/fleisch

Grave to the grind

Inimitable gears twist
To churn a living grave
Stainless cogs shredding
Scathing pistons bludgeon and flail
Stripping to the bone
Retund mandrels levigate
Just raw material
Your pound of flesh for the suzerain
Toiling, rotting
Life slowly dissipates
Consumed, inhumed
In a corruption line, mechanized
By mincing machinery, industrialized - crunched and brutalised
A grave to the blind

08   Blind Bleeding the Blind (04:57)

Parched with thirst our cup overfloweth
With the crimson milk of human blindness
In charnel towers of ivory besieged
The bones of subjugation are picked clean
In barren decadence, tears are the only affluence
Welling eyes are indifferent, as the blind bleed

Blood and tear - out damn spot out
The fruits of perpetual decay
Pouring the salts in open wounds - out damn spot out
The scars remain, will stay perpetual decay

Bloody hands never wash clean
Abject misery to bleed
Decadence to feed
Out damn spot out

Parched with thirst how the other half die
Void of compassion our cup runs dry
With a silver spoon born to dig communal graves
The only consecration, the economics of pain
In barren decadence, tears are the fuel of affluence
Wells of blood run diffluent, a bitter harvest to reap...

09   Doctrinal Expletives (03:39)

A play on words
Or words on play
Last chapter, verse
In the final act
Words well scripted
Each sentence choking
Inaudible gag
Blanket which suffocates
As you eat another's words
Malnourished, you starve

-Solo-

Silence
Has a definition
A vocabulary
Of muted diction
Precise thought
To miscomprehend
Ambiguity in
High resolution
Articulate
Expletive fiction
Open to misinterpretation
So precise
Silence has a definition
A vocabulary
Of muted diction
Articulate, expletive

Condensed meaning
Making no sense
Open mouth the lines
In stressed expression
Understand the silence
The piercing calm
Sour music to your ears
As you regurgitate
Another's words
In their shallowness
You drown

-Solo-

Silence
Has a definition
A vocabulary
Of muted diction
Precise thought
To miscomprehend
Ambiguity in
High resolution
Articulate
Expletive fiction
Open to misinterpretation
So precise
Silence has a definition
A vocabulary
Of muted diction
Articulate, expletive

A play on words
Making no sense

-Solos-

Which makes no sense
Which makes none sense

10   Death Certificate (03:40)

A grim myriad
A grey kaleidoscope
Sterile, contrasting
Born and die
Institutionalised
A bleak epitaph
An epilogue so sad

Cross indexed
Cross dissected
Cross referenced
Contabescence
Cross indexed
Cross bisected
Cross referenced
Certificate of death

Machine coded
Reduced to hard memory
In a data base
Digitalised
Statistical obituary
Your only legacy
Your final resting place

Cross indexed
Cross dissected
Cross referenced
Contabescence
Cross indexed
Cross bisected
Cross referenced
Certified dead

-Solos-

Cross indexed
Cross dissected
Cross referenced
Contabescence
Cross indexed
Cross bisected
Cross referenced
Certificate of death

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Other reviews

By TheSilentMan

 Heartwork is the masterpiece of the quartet that has marked pages in the history of metal.

 An album that you cannot dislike if you are lovers of death metal not necessarily played exclusively at impractical tempos and with only meaningless screams.


By JohnHolmes

 The album is permeated by a dreamlike and raging atmosphere, past styles are largely forgotten and for the first time introspective lyrics appear, definitively abandoning gore.

 With Jeff Walker always in the limelight, a superb Ken Owen on the drums and two guitarists like Steer/Amott... it couldn’t help but result in a summation of Melodic Death.


By velu

 "Heartwork is a fundamental album, not only in the history of Carcass but also for the entire extreme metal scene."

 "This is probably the definitive Carcass album, the only one that encapsulates all the souls that have distinguished them in previous albums."