Carcass - Black Star

Oh yes, it’s time for a stone cold classic on this fine Friday, folks; it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that Carcass are the reason some of your potential favourite bands even exist today. Pioneers of the melodeath and grindcore genres and all round talented lads, the extreme metallers from Liverpool, England aren’t short on accolades, even if they are short on subtlety – with debut tracks delightfully titled “Vomited Anal Tract” and “Genital Grinder”, you sort of know what you’re getting into before your ears even need to kick in.

Gloriously brutal as those days were, the band certainly shifted into a more melodic direction beyond the 1990s. Shifting focus from their splattergore roots and changing an entire music landscape with 1993’s Heartwork, Carcass kept on that trail from then on, with the occasional reference to mutilation of some form kept in, which must have made the anal tract regurgitating purists happy at least. A fun aside; Carcass are one of the very, VERY select few death metal acts to be featured on a major music label, which is testament to not only their skill but to just how game-changing their work actually was. Good luck getting Atlantic Records to sign off on a song about excreting a foetus, that’s all we can say.

We’ve taken our pick for the week from what was supposed to be the band’s last album before their breakup in 1996, Swansong (the band would reunite in 2007 and release two more albums) and it’s a doozy. Black Star is a crushing, all-senses-assaulted masterpiece and remains to this day one of their finest post-grindcore works. Honestly, if anyone could ever get sick of that opening riff, it’s not someone you want to spend any extended period of time with anyway.