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Rating: Evolution. What a spectacle. And what a strangeness. Take, for instance, a band named Carcass and follow their evolution: from Grind pioneers to inventors of Melodic Death Metal, passing through ultra-technical Death metal. But it's on the melodic period that I want to linger. Yes, because after 5-6 years spent in the metal music underground, our guys stop being an established niche group, and to do this, they don't resort to cheap pop, no sir: they invent a genre. Maybe saying "invent" is too daring, let's rather say they "codify" a genre that was being developed in Sweden, in Göteborg: Melodic Death Metal. As the name suggests, this genre is a blend of Death metal and typically old-school melodies/harmonies: think Iron Maiden or Judas Priest to get the idea, resulting in something decidedly more pleasant compared to the Death proposed by Immolation and friends.
The year is 1993 and Carcass, after a long tour, return to the studio in May to give life to their undisputed masterpiece, which will bear the name Heartwork (an ambiguous and humor-laden title, in keeping with their style...). The line-up is the historic one featuring the three pillars Steer/Walker/Owen and the Anglo-Swedish guitarist Michael Amott, who in this work will demonstrate all his skill.
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. From Buried Dreams to the concluding Death Certificate, the message is clear: there may be melody, but this quartet is still capable of unleashing violence like few others. For a masterpiece like Heartwork, it wouldn't be fair to comment on individual songs, all conceived to perfection; I can merely say that tracks like the title track, Carnal Forge, or Arbeit Macht Fleisch will remain imprinted in your mind.
What else to say? Colin Richardson's production work (Sepultura, Napalm Death, Cannibal Corpse...) is sublime, as for the musicians... with Jeff Walker always in the limelight, a superb Ken Owen on the drums and two guitarists like Steer/Amott (the latter increasingly unstoppable), it couldn't help but result in a summation of Melodic Death, essential for that Swedish trilogy of '95 (Slaughter of the Soul; The Gallery; The Jester Race) which will make history. Highly recommended to those who love Carcass but haven't yet been able to appreciate it and to those who want to delve into Melodic Death.
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 jigoro
Carcass revolutionized everything, mixing aggressive Death Metal with melodic elements, creating the Melodic Death Metal genre.
Heartwork 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.
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."
