Carcass is one of the most interesting death metal bands that I’ve ever heard, because they had a hand in influencing two kinds of extreme metal. In the late 80s, they started off as a grindcore band, eventually moving into deathgrind with 1989’s Symphonies Of Sickness (that’s the album I’ll be talking about today, by the way). After a couple of albums, they released 1993’s Heartwork. I’ve listened to, as well as reviewed, that album, and it’s a classic of melodic death metal. That album is a pioneering album of melo-death, and that right there is what’s so interesting about this UK outfit. Carcass helped to influence two styles of metal. You don’t see that with a lot of bands. What other bands can you name that really influenced two kinds of metal? Not many. Hell, Carcass did that within the span of six years, releasing their debut LP, Reek Of Putrefaction, in 1987, and Heartwork was released in 1993. It took me awhile to really get into Carcass, and that’s mainly because I listened to their last album, 2013’s Surgical Steel, which was their first album almost twenty years. They pulled an At The Gates, and broke up in the mid-90s, only to come back after twenty years with an album that a lot of people loved. I wasn’t crazy about it, only because they went back to their deathgrind sound, I believe, and the album was a bit too much for me to take in. When I started getting into 90s death metal, I saw that Heartwork was a pioneering album in melo-death, and sure enough, it is. It’s one of my favorite death metal albums, so I’ve wanted to listen to more of their stuff, even though they were a grindcore band in their early days. That’s kind of an interesting sound that they came from, but I decided to go with 1989’s Symphonies Of Sickness, mainly because they were slowly starting their pivot to death metal.
This LP, from what I read, has elements of death album, and you could even argue that this is one of the first deathgrind albums. I’ve given this album a ton of listens for the last week, give or take, and I love this record, folks. Out of all the grindcore albums that I’ve been into, this one is my favorite. It’s easily because they take both death metal and grindcore, but they do something different with it. They combine both styles into something totally different. Napalm Death would eventually do the same thing, but they were always more of a grindcore band. This band, however, made the pivot to death metal here. The album is a bit more accessible (at least in its song structures, and the overall length of the album, not necessarily its sound, since death metal still isn’t for everyone, even for certain metalheads), but it still retains the brutal, gory, and disgusting sound of their earlier work. Symphonies is about 43 minutes, but it never overstays its welcome, or feels like it’s a long album. I will say, however, it’s slightly rough around the edges, only because this style of music was very new at that time, so while the balance is very good, it can feel slightly disjointed. Bands like Exhumed, Aborted, and Cattle Decapitation, all from the late 90s and early 00s, essentially perfected deathgrind, but Carcass is the band, at least one of them, to really bring it to fruition. I love this album, because it’s a damn good deathgrind album that does what it does well, and showed that these guys wanted to do something unique and interesting grindcore. It’s kind of telling, too, because this album somewhat foreshadows what they’d do with Heartwork in just six years’ time. I’d have to say that I like Heartwork more, because it’s a very streamlined, melodic, and well-performed album, but at the same time, Symphonies Of Sickness is a great album, too. If you’re into deathgrind or grindcore, it’s an essential album to listen to.
