Carcass
Friday night offered local heshers the rare chance to see some of the few remaining legends of death metal. Carcass, Exhumed and Obituary call back the Clinton-era days when our parents would wander into our rooms and ask if we really did “call this music.” These three reformed in recent years and for the first time in two decades, Carcass — the other arguably legendary band from Liverpool, UK — was in Nashville.
Stepping into Exit/In Spinnishly tardy, we expected to encounter a typically disappointing Nashville metal crowd. We assumed we'd have time to grab a cheap beer and maybe count all the newly sleeveless Mastodon, Gojira and Kvelertak shirts purchased at Marathon the night before. We were wrong. Dead wrong. The fittingly dark, black-walled room bulged at capacity, the club having turned away droves of disappointed ticket-less hessians.
Speaking of disappointment, we made our Exit/In entrance just as Obituary was wrapping up. Seriously, who (Rocketown?) who starts a metal show at 7:30? Anyway, Obit kept it pretty real to their Floridian cookie-monster-voiced chugga-chugga-core sound — the dark sonic embodiment of a state that's had so many of its citizens featured as subjects on ID Network shows. Plus, alligator bellows, like wiretap-captured murder confessions, are the perfect inspiration for death metal vocalists. While the boys from Tampa were all the rage with the drunk slam-dancers in attendance, it was pretty clear the long-hairs were there to see four lads from Liverpool who changed rock 'n' roll forever.
Obituary
Looking around the room was a good indicator of Carcass' Nashville fan demographic. There were longhairs in Napalm Death long-sleeves; stud-and-leather punkers; record nerds who discovered the Earache ragers when John Peel flew their flag — all in all, Exit/In looked like a class reunion of Thrashville, Tennessee circa 1998. You could spot members of every local underground metal and hardcore band that ever took the stage at Lucy's, 328 and The Eighth Day. People had come out of their hibernation caves to pay tribute to the Kings of UK Death Metal.
We could hardly see the bar through a sea of black-denim-clad warriors raising goat horns in homage to what they were about to witness — Carcass resurrected before their very eyes. Sights and sounds weren't the only sensational items of note, though. There were also smells. The air was heavy with the musk of metal dudes trapped in their parents' basement for the last two decades, as if refusing to come out (or shower) until Carcass came to town. Naturally, there was a tension in the crowd — caged adrenaline and an urge to spill blood. Behind the stage was a giant tapestry flanked by two smaller screens, all displaying a cryptic circle of archaic medical tools. It was the cover of the Carcass' 2013 comeback album, Surgical Steel.
As the lights came up, the band went into the obligatory instrumental metal intro and the heshers hoisted beer bottles just a little higher in excitement, and in respect. No band has ever written more eloquent songs about vivisections and decaying human flesh. No other band has ever successfully hammered metal into a blend of grindcore rippers and Thin Lizzy guitarmonies. As those guitar harmonies built, metal heads began bouncing about in anticipation. Just when the stress had hit a peak, the band released the pressure and exploded into the obvious crowd-pleaser “Buried Dreams.” From there, the set was a pretty evenhanded representation of all eras of Carcass. They ripped through a generous handful of late-'80s blast-beat thrashers, melted faces with a few of Heartwork's melodic death moshers and included the choice cuts from their newest record. The thing we most appreciated was that the band recognized no one likes their 1996 album Swansong, arguably the Chinese Democracy of death metal. Par for the course, the Swansong cut Carcass did crank out, “Keep on Rotting in the Free World,” inspired increasing beer lines, merch purchases and bathroom trips.
The band seemed to have as much of a blast as we did during the hour-plus-long set. Frontman Jeff Walker commended the crowd whenever he got the chance, and proclaimed Nashville one of the best shows of the tour, and without once making the all too familiar “I thought all you had here was country” statement. We are Nashville, and we were pretty proud to show a good time to some crusty old Brits.
Seeing as how a waling, show-closing “Heartwork” showed just how much grind is left in these geezers, this mutual admiration is important for Music City, perhaps explaining why it happened before (we’re guessing) Karl Dean’s bedtime. Y’all can be sure Carcass doesn't skip us over for the next 20 years.
