Wander over to the pre-order page for Autopsy’s The Headless Ritual, where the new album recorded this summer can be ordered in advance of its release, so that you get it as soon as possible after it slips off the presses and zooms through the mails, smelling of new plastic and old gore, into your sweaty little hands.
Two weeks ago, Chris Reifert answered a mini-interview from us about the new album, in which he revealed that this album may be taking more of a faithful return to Autopsy’s older style without parroting the older material. Cover art and tracklist look promising as well.
At that point, our editorial statement emerged as follows:
During the early days of death metal, Autopsy were distinct because of their ability to use multiple tempi per song, to employ harmony and theme, and to use seemingly sloppy, grotesque, overflowing riffs to convey themes of death, suffering and disease. Their career arguably peaked with 1991′s Mental Funeral, an album of many varied songs of different lengths and song structures, presenting a strange landscape for the listener to navigate.
Last year’s Macabre Eternal showed Autopsy returning to the sound of old school death metal and the abrasive aesthetics that came with it, but not quite entering the realm of the weird where obscure song structures and riffs contribute to mood as much as they did on older Autopsy releases. Although that album showed promise, its somewhat consistent approach created a uniform intensity which resulted in much of the content getting lost on some ears.
Macabre Eternal showed Autopsy returning to their older style in a faithful and stalwart form. Let’s hope for The Headless Ritual not only returning to form, but resurrecting the type of content and artistic attention to detail and purpose that made older Autopsy stand head and shoulders above the crowd.
Tags: autopsy, death metal
Absolutely looking forward to this. For a while, I was suspicious of newer Autopsy material, since the only songs I’d heard were the two lackluster new songs included as bonus tracks on the Severed Survival reissue. I picked up All Tomorrow’s Funerals because it had Fiend for Blood and Retribution for the Dead on it, and I was pleasantly surprised by new songs like “Broken People.” I’ve since bought Macabre Eternal, which is also great, especially that longer doom metally track towards the end of the album.
As for the whole “return to form” thing, over the years, I’ve really come to appreciate Acts of the Unspeakable and Shitfun as classics in their own right, so the only slight deviation from “form” I can think of is the material they recorded immediately after reuniting, which is understandable since it was kind of a “dry run.”
Acts of the Unspeakable is a great continuation of the style they developed on Fiend for Blood, with the addition of a lot of Zappa-influenced apocalyptic psychedelia and grindcore/thrash/noise stuff reminiscent of Nuclear Death (makes sense seeing as Reifert was obviously a big enough fan to guest on their albums) and Impetigo. Shitfun takes that hybrid even farther into alienated and depraved territory, dropping some (but not all) of the melody for droning doom chugs in the Saint Vitus style. I always hear that this album was supposed to be an Abscess release, but I’m not sure that I buy it. It sounds a lot more like Autopsy than it does like the Abscess albums that immediately followed it.
I think that a lot of the hate that mid ’90s Autopsy gets is undeserved, and probably stems more from their grotesque imagery rather than the music itself. Abscess’ first album and demos were pretty cool as well. They didn’t get boring until later; ironically, this appears to have coincided with them trying to be more Autopsy-like.
So yeah, absolutely looking forward to this. Autopsy has been a favorite of mine for nearly a decade.
Acts of the Unspeakable is a great album. While not as good, Shitfun was mostly lambasted for it’s grotesque cover art. The drummer of Gorefest said he wouldn’t listen to it because of how “over the top” the cover is, even if Autopsy was the band they started ripping off. Funny, I thought no subject matter was off limits in death metal, no matter how sickening it may be. Then again, at that time the “PC” image was most important, as evidenced by Carcass and Napalm Death preaching human rights, Gorefest turning into Pantera covering Wolverine Blues liberal slogan shirt wearers, and bands like Death and Cynic were also doing the “deep” lyrics and image that was trendy at the time.
The main problem that I have with Shitfun’s art is that it’s just kind of lazy. Small photograph centered in black space with the logo over it. Definitely not up to standard with all of the awesome art that they had up ’til then. Autopsy was definitely always out of step with whatever the trends were at the time. Probably why they’re one of the best.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHVfMWs9Juw
Yuck! Don’t know why they had to drag part of an awesome song from False into that trainwreck.
If you think that’s a train wreck:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YqHyYoYrZ8
That one just sounded like any ’90s alternative rock band. It’s not offensively bad like some of their mid ’90s stuff I’ve heard, but I’m not really sure what they were going for. If you’re going to go fully commercial, change your name and get a better singer so that you can at least make some money.
This one sounds like a mash-up between Metallica’s Load and Marilyn Manson:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRwUw2e_Sf4
The sad thing is I own this cd :======(