They’re a band credited with creating the blueprint for both melodic death metal and goregrind, whilst incorporating trademark gross-out imagery and dark humour into their lyrics and album artwork. Thirty years on, several line-up changes and periods of inactivity and Carcass are still going strong presenting us with Torn Arteries, an album previously shelved for a year due to the global pandemic.
Torn Arteries is the band’s seventh record and definitely stands out from the rest of their back catalogue, both sonically and stylistically. The band are very aware that they have a sound, that you can tell from a cursory listen that it’s them, that it’s Bill Steer‘s guitar tone. With regards to album art, the band have also taken a different approach this time around, opting for a cleaner and what some may call a “safer” design. Eschewing the more typical aesthetic of death metal, it’s almost a piece that could sit on a coffee table – with the Carcass twist.
Visuals aside, the album is still being met with wary anticipation since founding member and guitarist Bill Steer referred to the band as “Dad Rock” in a recent Rolling Stone interview. They’ve openly stated they didn’t set out to make an album like their previous work, and it’s true, Torn Arteries offers up a far less intense listening experience than 2013’s hard hitter, Surgical Steel. It’s by no means a ‘radio friendly’ record but certainly proves that the band know their craft inside out and have more than earned their stripes over the years, giving them the freedom to experiment outside their comfort zone.
Walker claims that each Carcass album is always “a product of its time” and that shows as album opener and title track ‘Torn Arteries’ bursts into action. Four minutes of unrelenting, thrashy, melo-death to ease the listener in before starting to shake things up. Tracks such as ‘Dance Of Ixtab’ and ‘Kelly’s Meat Emporium’ are significantly groovier outputs, bringing in those big stoner guitar riffs alongside the signature black humour. (Ixtab being the Mayan goddess of suicide by hanging.) Sadly, neither song seems to have the payoff it deserves, unlike ‘The Devil Rides Out’ which in contrast, is fairly repetitive until around the four-minute mark where it starts to pick up pace and become interesting, although it’s too short lived before we’ve really had a chance to fully enjoy it.
The most puzzling song on the album comes in the form of ‘Flesh Ripping Sonic Torment Limited’, a track that clocks in at almost ten minutes in length and for some unknown reason, placed directly in the middle of the record. A bold move to say the least, especially if you’re not known for writing ‘epics’. During its run-time the song features so many musical changes that it almost begins to feel like a mini-album within an album, or album-ception to coin a phrase. ”
Overall, Torn Arteries proves to be an interesting listen rather than a tedious one, but it does also feel very ‘by numbers’ at times. Whilst it may not stand out or act as much of a gateway record for younger generations, already fans of the band are sure to enjoy it. It’s Carcass doing what they do best, be it the tongue in cheek lyrics such as “having daddy issues with father time” from closer ‘The Scythe’s Remorseless Swing’, or the simply hilarious song titles like ‘Eleanor Rigor Mortis’ or ‘Wake Up And Smell The Carcass’. The elements are all there, they just also happen to be packaged in alongside a few new ideas from roads less travelled, perfectly acceptable for a band with such a legendary status.