A Primer on Metal Legends Carcass, Playing Exit/In Nov. 7

Holy crap, y'all,

in LESS THAN TWO WEEKS! I don't even live in town anymore and I'm stoked for this.

Nashville missed out on the band's first major stateside tour in decades when Carcass headlined the Decibel Magazine tour earlier this year, but a bill with Exhumed, Obituary and Noisem is a sweet consolation prize. (Noisem played that Decibel tour, too.)

But my gut tells me that there might be some of you who aren't properly pumped about this show. If you have even a passing interest in metal, you need to cancel all other plans for Nov. 7. Don't have $25? Sell some plasma.

For the uninitiated, here's a Carcass primer:

Three dudes in Liverpool, England, started what would become Carcass in 1985. Bill Steer also played in Napalm Death (Scum, side 2), and Jeff Walker was in Electro Hippies. Early on, they were grindcore pioneers, putting out records with gory art and short songs with ridiculous titles. But we're gonna jump right into their finest hour.

“This Mortal Coil” from Heartwork (1993)

This is probably a weird place to start, because Heartwork was a pretty drastic shift in direction for the band in '93. While Carcass was instrumental in laying the groundwork for gore-obsessed, guttural grindcore, they mostly ditched both those trademarks to release one of earliest melodic death metal albums. It's a style At the Gates and a bunch of other Swedish bands would take and run with later on (And oh hey, At the Gates

), but Heartwork is the gold standard.

“Genital Grinder/Regurgitation of Giblets” from Reek of Putrefaction (1988)

Reek of Putrefaction sounds like shit, but that's part of its charm. The guy who recorded Carcass’ debut album had no idea what he was getting into, and the band of teenagers didn't really have an idea of what they were doing at this point either. Song titles like “Manifestation of Verrucose Urethra” and “Carbonized Eyesockets” are a pretty good clue as to what this sounds like. There are earlier examples of goregrind, but this is really where the whole thing gained traction.

“Exhume to Consume” from Symphonies of Sickness (1989)

The first of the band’s three classics, Symphonies of Sickness is all gore, guts and blood, with doses of pitch-black humor sprinkled within all the medical jargon. Unlike their debut, you can actually hear all the riffs on this one. By this point they’d abandoned the less-than-a-minute-long songs for the more sophisticated death metal they’d pursue for the rest of their run, inasmuch that something titled “Crepitating Bowel Erosion” can be called sophisticated. The first two albums are the Carcass records that lean hardest on the super low death metal growls that tend to weed out casual metal listeners.

“Incarnated Solvent Abuse” from Necroticism — Descanting the Insalubrious (1991)

Necroticism was a quantum leap on par with Metallica’s Ride the Lighting. The thrash influences are a lot more obvious here, which are twisted into knotty riffs that fold in on themselves. By this point they’d also added a fourth member, guitarist Michael Amott (who’d later start Arch Enemy), which turned this is into a guitar record through and through, with every song stuffed with about a dozen different riffs.

“Heartwork” from Heartwork (1993)

Another one from this album, ‘cause it rules.

“Keep on Rotting in the Free World” from Swansong (1996)

This was Carcass’ oft-maligned last album. It’s a bit more of a groove-metal record, anchored in the death ‘n’ roll that bands like Entombed were doing at the time. There are still some gems on it, like the album opener above (listen to that cowbell!), but the only bad songs Carcass ever wrote

. The band had signed to Columbia before recording the album, which was shuffled from one label to the next. By the time it came out on Earache, Carcass had called it a day.

“The Granulating Dark Satanic Mills” from Surgical Steel (2013)

When one of your favorite bands reunites and puts out their first record in 17 years, the anticipation is usually muddied with a fair bit of “I hope they don’t embarrass themselves.” Rare is the comeback album that achieves much more than just being decent, and there have been some

in metal. Surgical Steel crushed those odds; it was my favorite album of 2013. Some of Swansong’s groove is still in there, but in a lot of ways the new one serves as more of a follow-up to Heartwork.

All caught up? Now go grab a denim vest, sew some Carcass patches on there and try not to act like a poser.