Carcass
Wake Up And Smell The... Carcass

THE REVIEW

What could be better than a collection at the end of a band's artistic career?

The "the best of..." is also quite annoying, as it's often just a mere commercial operation to attract some more fans and to give old aficionados something more to buy and comment on, even if they already know all the songs by heart. Before this "Wake up and smell the...carcass," Jeff Walker and company had released two furious grindcore albums but already hinted at, with "Symphonies of Sickness," a future evolution of songwriting, and then two absolute masterpieces of technical death metal like "Necroticism..." and "Heartwork," albums that even today do not lose an ounce of their power and value. Then the darkness; Carcass worked on the new album and moved to Sony, which tried to impose its own music business rules on them, and all these hassles led to continual delays in the album's publication, excessive stress among the band's members, and its inevitable breakup, before "Swansong" was still released thanks to the savior Earache.

The album I review here is not just a simple collection with a couple of unreleased tracks, but a gem, a gift for all Carcass fans, as the first five tracks are unreleased songs from the "Swansong" sessions not included in the original CD, thus making it a mini-album that completes their discography, as they are very recent songs. Here we have "Edge of Darkness," which wouldn't have been out of place as an opener or single on "Swansong," the fast-paced "Emotional Flatline," "Ever Increasing Circles," the more relaxed "Blood Spattered Banner," and the rocking "I Told You So (Corporate Rock Really Does Suck)."

I'm not going to comment on each piece individually, as they are simply on the same level as the others on "Swansong" and ideally are its continuation, the style is that super distorted rock/blues mentioned above and sung by Jeff Walker with his increasingly vitriolic voice. The production and sounds are the best in their discography, thanks to Colin Richardson who over the years has always followed them and managed to bring out the best in them, the solos are beautiful, articulated, clean, and show us an inspired Bill Steer who is not at all in a creative crisis despite the mishaps that led to their breakup.

The other tracks include four pieces played live on a radio show in 1994, two tracks from the "Heartwork" EP (including the legendary "Rot 'n' Roll"), and then more tracks taken from the "Tools of the Trade" EP and the "Pathological" and "Grindcrusher" compilations, including some songs from the first two albums rerecorded a few years later with much better sounds and execution; you'll be amazed by the instrumental "Genital Grinder II," the bone-crushing "Pyosisified (Still Rotten to the Gore)," or the super technical "Hepatic Tissue Fermentation II," of which we are also presented with the original 1989 version.

"Exhume to Consume" closes this CD, which definitively seals the career of Carcass and consecrates them among the best grind/death bands of the '90s. Their career, more so than many others, has shown how a band can progress technically even while starting from the near cacophony of their beginnings; listening to "Reek of Putrefaction" and subsequently "Swansong," it seems like you're not hearing the same group.

Carcass started from the most brutal and underground grindcore, went through the technical and melodic death metal, and then reached the brutal rock of their last album, always maintaining their identity and knowing how to challenge themselves album after album. This "Wake up and smell the... carcass" (which shows us on the cover J.F. Kennedy's head with the brain shattered on the mortuary table) retraces their career but not through a collection of already heard tracks, rather offering us five new unreleased tracks and a series of live and b-sides pieces that can only make us regret that Carcass is no longer around, even if their last live performances give a glimpse of hope.....

So as you breed... they will bleed!