Carcass Reek of Putrefaction is the first album from the British Grind / Death Metal band. A lot of people consider this album to be a little undercooked. I tend to agree, but it’s easy to look back and say that but at the time you had Napalm Death putting out shittily recorded albums, and really it was the first Bolt Thrower album was even passable as far as recording went. There wasn’t a lot on the English underground scene that sounded that much better than this.
Bill Steer had at this point exited from Napalm Death to focus more on Carcass. I have to say Carcass did have something here, but yes, it was hidden by the muddy recording. There were some sloppy parts on this too I have to say, but I can give ’em a bit of a pass as they were young (and hey, lets face it, I wasn’t doing anything better when I was their age) but one thing they did win at was their marketing. The cover of this as you can see features various parts of corpses (of both human and animal kind) and really struck a nerve with a lot of people, drawing attention from various censorship groups and exciting young metalheds everywhere. Through shock value the band aimed to portray human and animal meat as one and the same, as at least a couple of members were either vegan or vegetarian.
The songs themselves continued on from what Bill was doing in Napalm Death but it’s really the lyrical content that set them apart being morbidly obsessed with death and decay and working this in with some quite over the top lyrical concepts. Hats off to them for that. Musically this was Grindcore is as Grindcore does. There was nothing that made them stand out from say Napalm Death or Repulsion but hey there was some pretty cool groves in this. Lyrically vocalist Jeff Walker was a lot more advanced than the music the band was producing. Rumours circulated that he was a medical professional as was the depth of his knowledge about the human body and the dying / rotting process. It was like someone had force fed him a medical dictionary and the Carcass lyrics were what had been shat out. It was great stuff!
Whilst not putting out a record that musically stood out in anyway the band did establish a strong fan base with their imagery and lyrical bent. The path was laid out in front of them to really make a name for themselves with their next album. I’m glad I have this album from an historical point of view, but as their third album “Necroticism” was the first (absolutely brilliant) album I bought of theirs it was kind of hard to go back and listen to this.
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