AUTOPSY: Macabre Eternal

Produced by Adam Munoz
Released: 2011

When Chris Reifert and Danny Coralles put Abscess to bed after last year's disappointing Dawn of Inhumanity, it was really just a matter of time before Autopsy would stagger to life once again. For their first album in 16 years, the California quartet has upped the production values to bring it into line with modern expectations, thus leaving behind the dirty, crusty sound of their early masterpieces, Severed Survival and Mental Funeral.

Macabre Eternal might sound a lot cleaner, but that doesn't mean Autopsy has forgotten how to be one brutal and evil band. The opening track rips out a path of relentless violence that sets a tone of furious and filthy death metal. Then "Dirty Gore Whore" goes into an almost-Abscess direction with a berzerk riff and a breakdown reminiscent of Slayer with Reifert sounding like he's gone completely insane. "Always About to Die" and the cuts that follow revert to vicious slabs of brutal death that shift almost imperceptibly between tear-your-face off speed and slower slab-like parts.

Enter then "Seeds of the Doomed", where Autopsy gears down into a doomy sludge with a surprisingly melodic riff. It's so different from everything else, but still unaccountably Autopsy and close to the album's best moment. Following this are some weaker, non-descript tracks of which only "Born Undead" stands out. It's almost as if the band has used up all their ideas on the first half. Until, that is, "Sadistic Gratification" enters the picture, a sprawling, sinister 11-minute plus exploration of human depravity. A slow, doomy intro builds towards sections of wildly thrashing death metal that recede and then explode again to a gruesome climax of purely evil vocals and slamming riffs underscored by the screams and pleas of a female torture victim. It's creepy, hackle-raising, uncomfortable, disturbing and insidious, exactly what death metal should be. Macabre Eternal should end there, but Autopsy adds a jarring coda in "Spill My Blood" that veers between blazing thrasher and sludgy drone before a sudden finish.

All told, it's a somewhat exhausting 65 minutes, making it about twenty minutes too long with the inclusion of the various filler tracks around the middle but even so it is a solid return from some true masters of real death metal.

1. Hand of Darkness
2. Dirty Gore Whore
3. Always About to Die
4. Macabre Eternal
5. Deliver Me From Sanity
6. Seeds of the Doomed
7. Bridge of Bone
8. Born Undead
9. Sewn Into One
10. Bludgeoned and Bloodied
11. Sadistic Gratification
12. Spill My Blood

Rating: 76%

ABSCESS: Dawn of Inhumanity

Released March 15

I haven't listened to Abscess for many years but as soon as "Goddess of Filth and Plague" began it seemed like not much had changed. And essentially, this is correct, as Dawn of Inhumanity has that typically dirty, punk-edged death metal thrashing that this band has always done. The problem with Abscess is that their albums tend to run out of steam before the end. Dawn of Inhumanity is different because this happens a lot sooner.

The cover art continues the fascination they've had with eyes since Tormented, this time with a procession of insect-legged eyes and severed hands being led by some hooded men along a river of blood. Musically, it's Abscess: sludgy, punkish death metal with doom parts and a raw, dirty production with unspectacular drumming and thin guitar solos. The big and fatal difference on Dawn of Inhumanity is the length of the tracks. In the time it used to take them to play 30 songs or more, this time there's only 10, and most of them are far too long.

"Torn From Tomorrow" is their typically cool punk-flavoured death-thrash with some demented soloing and on "Never Sane Again" the band descends into a sprawling, punkish doom death with Chris Reifert turning in a deranged vocal like a cross between Obituary's John Tardy and Rok from Sadistik Exekution. But most of the other songs are either mind-numbingly over-long noisefests or one riff punk songs that should be about three minutes shorter than they are. The creeping, seemingly endless noise of "The Rotting Land" in turns leads into the seemingly endless noodling of "Dead Haze" as if they are both the one long, drawn-out jam. "What Have We Done to Ourselves" kicks back into sludgy punk rock just in time to prevent the listener from slipping into a boredom-induced coma, but then decides to just go on and on and on and on for five and a half minutes, getting nowhere.

Abscess albums have always been little more than garageish thrashing, yet they were fun because the songs were so short. This one starts out like all the others, but wears out its welcome far quicker. Meh.

1. Goddess of Filth and Plague
2. Torn From Tomorrow
3. Never Sane Again
4. Dawn of Inhumanity
5. The Rotting Land
6. Dead Haze
7. What Have We Done to Ourselves
8. Dark Side of a Broken Knife
9. Divine Architect of Disaster
10. Black Winds of Oblivion

Rating: 45%