CARCASS — Reek of Putrefaction (review)

CARCASS — Reek of Putrefaction album cover Album · 1988 · Goregrind Buy this album from MMA partners
3/5 ·
Unitron
Carcass-Reek of Putrefaction

'Reek of Putrefaction' is the debut studio album by grindcore/death metal band Carcass. Carcass is most likely better known for their later death metal offerings, especially 'Heartwork' which is often said to be among the first melodic death metal albums. However, Carcass started out as one of the early grindcore bands with highly gory lyrics that is typical of a lot of grindcore.

Like most Grindcore, all of the songs are extremely short and violent with the average song length ranging from 1-3 minutes. While there is no shortage of brutal grindcore attacks, 'Reek of Putrefaction' already has death metal elements in their sound as heard in the great opener 'Genital Grinder'. This one and a half minute long song begins with droning guitar, but soon picks up with driving riffs that would not sound out of place on one of Carcass's later releases. The opening four songs are actually probably my favorites, they all have a pretty good balance between brutal grind drum pounding, crashing guitars, and the slower driving death-oriented passages. The other standout track for me is 'Burnt to a Crisp', which has a good combination of driving guitar and vocal snarls.

As many other reviewers have said, the production on this album is pretty bad. I'm usually pretty tolerant of productions, but I have to be in the right mood to be able to enjoy the music here. It really can be hard to enjoy it sometimes when the production is so murky and muffled. There is also quite the amount of filler. When I reviewed Nasum's 'Inhale/Exhale' I stated how the songs went by quickly but were complex and really packed a punch, however, these songs are of similar length but feel much longer then they really are. A lot of the songs are also pretty repetitive, which doesn't work too well for an album with over 20 songs.

Overall, this album has it's ups and downs. The first few tracks and some of the later songs like 'Burnt to a Crisp' are really catchy, and easily enjoyable if you can get past the production. I do recommend this album for those interested in hearing some early examples of grindcore and can deal with a muffled production. However, it's clear that Carcass would get better with each new release. Hope you found this review helpful.

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Unitron wrote:
more than 2 years ago
Yeah, I have to be in the right mood to be able to enjoy it with the production. Do you know if it's been remastered?
UMUR wrote:
more than 2 years ago
A Classic album that I´ve never really been able to enjoy on a personal level. I acknowledge the extremely influential nature of the album though, and in that light it´s an important album in the Development of extreme metal.

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