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Carcass > Heartwork > Reviews
Carcass - Heartwork

A Whelming Experience - 60%

CelestialEmissary, January 30th, 2024

Carcass…true icons of the metal world, as the progenitors of goregrind, deathgrind, and one of the earliest (if not the first) melodic death metal bands, as well as early death ‘n’ roll adopters. Heartwork is Carcass’ fourth album, and takes the more melodic version of Carcass hinted at occasionally on Symphonies of Sickness, used as a supplemental element on Necroticism, and shoves it to the forefront.

Before delving more into the sound of this album, I want to give a bit of history on this album. Earache Records’ distribution has been a thorn in my side as a CD fan for many years. I’ve never been sure if it has been the record stores I go to or the label themselves, but finding many of the ‘90s Earache releases by bands like Carcass, Napalm Death, Entombed, Bolt Thrower and more was always incredibly difficult. I had refused to listen to Heartwork until I found a physical copy, as I knew how much people had talked about it for years. One day while walking through an absolutely blistering blizzard, I opted to visit the tiny used CD/video game/DVD store in town. Among the dusty stacks of VHS’, old video game guides, countless copies of Bon Jovi’s Greatest hits and Extreme III (for some reason, this album is in every thrift store in the world in the CD section), I saw they had put out a few new CDs. One of them was a golden grail, something I’d been looking for for longer than I’d like to say. Carcass’ Heartwork. In a beautiful slipcase with a little fold-out poster to boot. I hopped and skipped to the cashier, and walked out of the shop happy as can be. While trudging back through the roughly 2 feet of snow that had already fallen while I had gone on my trek, I wondered to myself how great this album must be for it to be so talked about for so long.

I got home, threw the CD in my CD burner and then…

Buried Dreams hits me. It is pretty good. The next few songs hit me and kinda go in one ear and out the other. I get to the title track, which reminded me a bit of Necroticism, but not quite as angular-sounding. I got to the end of the album and shrugged. This was it? I must have heard it wrong. Maybe I wasn’t quite catching all the neat little details that Necroticism had. Maybe I needed to give it a few listens to settle in, or be in the right headspace. For the next few months, Heartwork is what I heard daily on repeat. I still couldn’t tell you the name of many of the songs on here just by listening to them. I never “got it”. I wish I did, but I just never did.

I recognize Necroticism-Descanting the Insalubrious was one of my first forays into the subgenre of death metal. It took a bit to settle in my head before quickly becoming one of my favourite albums of all time. Even when my brain was still processing that album, I still recognized that what I was listening to was clearly impressive, even if I was still not quite there yet on comprehending that album as a whole.

Heartwork always struck me as being something of a soulless album. I don’t mean this as in it is sloppy, or there wasn’t effort put into it. Tracks like Embodiment represent this lull in energy and weirdness that Carcass always had. The guitar tone on here is great! I’ve always found it sounded monstrously heavy. But the riffs just aren’t there. Ken Owen’s drumming has improved in the technical proficiency department, but lost some of the strangeness and catchiness that Necroticism had. Bill Steer’s vocals are completely gone, replaced entirely by Jeff Walker’s rasp. Jeff’s vocals sound great here too. The guitar work is impressive throughout, and the soloing sounds great.

Much of this album sits in that same mid-tempo groove that Necroticism had, but where Necroticism felt like that was a measured decision to go a bit slower in order to build a bit of atmosphere, before breaking into breakneck speed bits, the mid-tempo on here just kinda never really goes away for long enough. While fast bits do show up on songs like the title track and This Mortal Coil, they typically happen mostly at the start of songs, before the rest of the song sits chugging away happily in 2nd gear. All the songs on here kinda fade into a beige cloud like the backdrop of the (incredible art piece done by the great H.R. Giger) album cover.

I think a lack of cohesion, and a lack of real atmosphere on this album is what makes it so lacking in my eyes. Like I said, this is not a bad album by any stretch of the imagination. I don’t hate melodic death metal either. The use of melody on this album is not a problem to me (In fact I actually prefer Swansong to this album, as that album used the mid-tempo used on this album to much better effect by using it with a rocking swagger that this album doesn’t have). These songs in of their own right are not bad. Each one is passable to good. However, not a single song on this album stands out like Corporal Jigsore Quandary or Excoriating Abdominal Emanation. Like I said, the instrumental work on this album is fantastically done, and well-produced.

I’ve been listening to this album at least a few times a month for years now trying to figure out what I’m struggling to understand. Sometimes I put the album on repeat for days at a time as the only thing I listen to. Unfortunately, after hundreds of spins of this album, I haven’t gotten any closer to “getting it”. The most difficult album I found to get into was Gorguts’ Obscura album. While there is much more dissonant metal out there beyond Obscura, it was my first real foray into the world of more dissonant metal. It took me about a year of listening to it before I came to truly enjoy it and “get it”, but I’ve loved it since. This album has left me wanting for years, and I have never been able to pinpoint my frustration with this release.

I decided to write this review in the midst of yet another relisten to this album, and yet again, it flows in one ear and out the other with reckless abandon. While I can understand why people enjoy this album to some extent, it has always evaded me. This is particularly annoying, as I consider myself to be a huge Carcass fan. The albums preceding this one, and the one after it have always been reached for far before this one unfortunately. While the newer Carcass albums (Surgical Steel and Torn Arteries) have not been bad, I found the production on both of them to let down the material contained within. On this album, I find the performances good, the production good, the packaging good, and I was incredibly hyped to finally listen to it. When I finally did, I fell victim to the hype. If you love this album or find yourself really enjoying it, great! I’ll still be listening to this enigma in 10 years trying to crack it. Maybe this review will get amended one day if it clicks with me.

The morgue has officially closed - 83%

Annable Courts, January 10th, 2024

Once again Carcass act as a beacon for both modern metal production, and composition. The 'Symphonies' album was amply anachronistic for a release year starting in 198_ something, and the genre-defining 'Necroticism' was not close to - but exactly the sound of modern death-grind, and this, back at the very start of the 90's decade. Putting those Carcass albums next to most of their contemporary releases proves a sometimes astonishing exercise in attempting to grasp this band's historical significance in extreme metal. Here, they release a full-fledged melodic death metal album, in 1993 - only it's not the poetic prog type that would come out of Sweden around that time; it's the tight sounding thrashy melo-death from the end of the decade and that was so popular at the start of the new millennium.

Every now and then listening to this record, there's a feeling of disbelief at how advanced it is for its time; it's a little bit unbelievable. For anyone reading this, give this a try: play At The Gates' 'With Fear...' album (or Edge Of Sanity - 'The Spectral Sorrows', both from 1993 as well) and this one in succession, alternating between the two. They sound like albums from two different eras, let alone merely different years. There's no possible comparison on how much more detailed and crisp this is. The clarity here is close to immaculate: the guitars sound sculpted to perfection, all the while preserving the enormous 5150 (Peavey amp) gain heaviness. The drums punch right through the mix: the snare manages to conserve its subtle but noticeable reverb wash despite all the ongoing activity and the listener doesn't need to lean in to get the full thump of the kicks, and the blast beats produce that modern commanding effect, like a swarm.

The venomous vocals are present as always, although the band had opted to go for Walker alone on lead vocals and Steer keeping his cookie-monster voice to himself this time, which ultimately aligns with a more typical melo-death sound. Speaking of the individual instrumentalists, Amott has his signature sound all over the album. It's there on the more obvious components like the general harmonization of riffs or on the extravagant vibrato leads; and on some of the more subtle song-writing devices: on the title-track 'Heartwork', seconds before the final chorus, that chromatic crescendo of power chords. That's trademark Arch Enemy. Also on the massively heavy 'Embodiment', later in the track, there's that Megadeth-like repeated riff linked to evolving root bass notes. The album makes for a smooth listen all the way til the banging closer 'Death Certificate'.

Of course the criticism that comes this album's way is it may be too polished for its own good, and far from the intensity of the first works. The morgue has officially closed and its repulsive stench has been replaced by a lavish fragrance instead. It's almost like the white collar version of the band versus their previous blue collar. The original would gladly get their hands dirty as opposed to their glove wearing later incarnation here, especially when considering the more casual energy that's seeped into the mix with some bluesier, more rock oriented moments of leisure. This tendency would lead to the definitively casual 'Swansong'.

Carcass interuptus - 70%

Commander Octopus, January 9th, 2024

I do want to like this album more than I do. The number of perfect scores Heartwork has gathered in the Metal Archives is a rather blunt testimony of the impact this album keeps having. As for the style presented here and my relation to it, I was for a short time session musician for a band who built their entire sound on this album alone. They even derived their name from one of the song titles on Heartwork. I felt as a musician playing their songs a bit the same way as I feel when listening to this album - initially excited but rather instantly underwhelmed.

The case has been made that this would be something of an equivalent to Metallica's black album. But in all fairness, there is nothing remotely as commercial about Heartwork as with said album. Looking at bands who quickly evolved from death metal into innovators of other styles in the early 90's, none of those bands had the kind of popular radio friendly breakthrough as Metallica had, not even Paradise Lost, and speaking about bands still entirely depending on snarls, growls and no cleans whatsoever, forget about it! Truly commercial metal in the 90's except for Metallica happened in shapes of more hip hop/funk infused incarnations, such as Limp Bizkit, Korn, Rage Against The Machine or even Red Hot Chilli Peppers (not strictly metal, but some people didn't care), groove oriented acts like Pantera and Seputura maybe made it to Headbangers Ball, and some grunge adjacent bands were considered really heavy in the world of the mainstream.

Heartwork certainly wasn't a commercial album in that sense even if it may have been a relatively commercial success. There was no blueprint for this kind of metal, and so each step of evolution the early bands would take was always as huge of a risk as it was a stylistic necessity. Making the same album twice in the early 90's wasn't really hailed as true and loyal in the same way it is today in retrospect. What Carcass may have done with Heartwork is to have opened up for a broader appeal within the metal community, finally wowing those who had dismissed them based on the abysmal production of Reek of Putrefaction. It is fair to compare Heartwork and Carcass to Wolverine Blues and Entombed, since these albums and these bands tell a similar story and evolved rather simultaneously. What both albums did was taking the essence of their respective sounds and simplify it. But whereas Wolverine Blues managed to maintain the HM-2 gritty garage attitude (very much indebted to the Sunlight Studios aesthetics), Heartwork came out as a much more clinical product (kudos to Colin Richardson, who really started to reach his peak with this album), which felt logically adherent to their equally clinical lyrical content.

For someone who adored Necroticism, though, this simplicity and sterility of sound introduced an insurmountable series of coitus interuptus. If Necroticism was a plaster under which pus and gore manifested into a kaleidoscope of necrosis, on Heartwork the patch was pulled off, leaving remnants of it's predecessor clinging to the skin, the wound all but healed up into fine white scar tissue. It was Carcass alright, it sounded unmistakable, but it didn't come with the unhinged, grandiose majesty they had achieved two years earlier, equally to how Entombed set a bar so high with Clandestine, the only reasonable thing to do was to take their sound in a completely different direction. In a way, what you got with these two albums were two bands wrapping up two independently incredible achievements and managing to create yet another sub genre of metal as they went - death'n'roll.

Carcass legacy can be measured already from the first bars of the album. Compare "Buried Dreams" to the later Hypocrisy hit "Roswell 47" for example. It's quite a statement by the inventors of gore grind to open the entire CD with a song entirely in mid-tempo. But where Hypocrisy would later build their song into a majestic climax, Carcass chose to remain within a more rock oriented mold, the climax of the song being the guitar solo. The weighty introduction to the album is thus soon abandoned, and the biggest departure from the sound introduced with Necroticism is felt within minutes. The result is somewhat lukewarm. The omission of Bill Steer's lower grunts bereaves the album of one further dimension, and although nothing bad can be said of Jeff Walker's seminal vocals, the dual approach of yore is sorely missed.

The lack of dimensional depth to Heartwork doesn't really benefit from some of the songs not really going anywhere. There were moments like this on Nectroticism, but within the long song structures, these served as exiting excursions into the unknown. The whole point of going into extreme metal was the abrupt break with anything formulaic, commercial, predictable, and so even meandering tracks were delivered with sinister unpredictability. By streamlining into a rockier approach, this apprehensive excitement is somewhat lost, something which is particularly felt on tracks like "No Love Lost" and "Doctrinal Expletives", the former borrowing the backward-singing effect of "Forensic Clinicism/The Sanguine Article", thus somewhat hearkening back to its predecessor, something which happens a lot throughout the album and which renders it a sweet reminiscent flavor that is never fully allowed to bloom.

Admittedly, there are some really cool riffs going on here in between the more bland ones, for example the one 17 seconds into "Embodiment", a full blown Carcass moment if there ever was one. The songs throughout are incredibly catchy and everybody is playing at their top game. Ken Owen will always be one of my favorite metal drummers, and Steer and Amott trying to top each other in guitar acrobatics is a joy to hear. In this regard "Carnal Forge" is a jaw dropper, the first solo happening at 1 minute and the other one at 2:45. Listen to these two places if you have limited time and want a prime example of what this album does the best!

There is also a greater reliance on Iron Maiden-esque twin guitar work, and speaking of legacy, on the track "Heartwork" you can really hear how this sound came to influence what has become known as the Gothenburg sound. Michael Amott did have a decidedly bigger part in the songwriting on Heartwork, so the question is if Carcass influenced the Swedish sound, or if the Swede influenced Carcass...? The opening minute of this track could have been copy pasted straight onto one of Arch Enemy's (Amott's band after Carcass) earlier albums. Perhaps this is also my biggest objection to Heartwork as such. As accomplished as it is, I always found a lot of the Gothenburg sound a little too... happy? Necroticism was sinister, progressive and groundbreaking. Heartwork is groundbreaking, progressive in a different way, but there are not many traces of darkness. And that is perhaps the biggest reason why I come back to this album so seldom. I simply prefer other Carcass releases a lot more, in comparison with which this one falls a bit flat. "Death Certificate" ends this album in a very abrupt and almost understated way. And so the album ends with another of those rather frustrating coitus interuptus moments.

For anyone reading this far, I would like to recommend to spin Torn Arteries. I've seen some voices claiming that Surgical Steel was this band's return to form, but I think Torn Arteries does a better job laminating the highlights of Carcass collected oeuvre. A bad album this is not. Far from it. But for my taste, there is better Carcass elsewhere.

Perfectwork - 100%

Hames_Jetfield, December 3rd, 2023

The success caused by the release of "Necroticism - Descanting The Insalubrious" and the tours promoting this album did not stop the British-Swedish quartet from further activities and their general development trend. Well, work on the fourth Carcass lp went surprisingly smoothly, not to say - on autopilot. "Heartwork", because that's what we're talking about, was released barely two years after its great predecessor. And it's even more impressive that, despite the huge number of changes, this album achieved the same amazing quality and got even greater interest than previous releases.

On "Heartwork" Carcass immersed itself in a melodic variety of death metal; a style that caused particular confusion in the mid-1990s at the expense of the traditional view of extreme music. However, while melo-death itself is quite average to my taste and I listen to it more for formality than pleasure, Carcass' performance is excellent. Of course, there are a lot of changes, and for some listeners they will certainly be unacceptable, although the sounds from this album definitely do not lack power and genius - contrary to the common theory that greater melodiousness is associated with softening. Sure, the band obtained this power and genius on "Heartwork" by other means of expression and the whole album is much more accessible to untrained ears, but with these solutions the quartet perfectly managed to avoid clichés and too melodic parts, and the changes themselves logically result from the previous album. The riffs are crushing with their heavy metal style, the melodies are appropriately subtle and sophisticated, the solos are astonishingly sensitive, the matter of lyrics has changed (to a more reflective one, compared to the gore one), and for balance, Jeff Walker's vocal screech has become even more virulent than before (and thus, the remaining musicians stopped being so active vocally), intensive blasting was not completely abandoned and the resulting sound is distinguished by high selectivity, although it does not lack heaviness. To confirm, for example "Arbeit Macht Fleisch", "Death Certificate", the title track, "Carnal Forge" or "No Love Lost", but basically all of the tracks. All of them show how well Carcass has developed in melodic areas.

Rejecting death metal and goregrind sounds, surprisingly, did not prevent Walker's band from remaining at the top and increasing further successes. In fact, by fully entering the increasingly popular melodic style, the group very sensibly found its new self and recorded classy material. And some of the people were complaining about these changes? Well, this band never looked back in their early days. "Heartwork" shows that with so many changes you can maintain an extremely high level.

Originally on A bit of subjectivism...in metal

Melodic yet brutal - 100%

duwan, September 30th, 2023

Carcass... one of the most versatile bands, has the side of their grindcore epoch—my personal favorite though—and the melo-death/death 'n' roll age. I love both of them, but do you have the guts to listen to both eras of a band that changed music genres dramatically without disliking the other age of the band? Well, the fandom of Carcass is split up across both epochs, arguing about "what genre is better". But I would rather sink my head into the dust and listen to all of Carcass' full-lengths. Just a little trivia: I listened to all of Carcass' discography, so I have too much stuff to comment on and talk about here. This full-length is the most notable Carcass' album, either because of the departure of Bill Steer's brutal growls, which named Jeffrey Walker as Carcass' only duo-instrumented frontman, or because of the extremely dramatic genre and lyric-theme change.

I need to do a brand-new paragraph here and put after the band's description; it's Heartwork's most classic aspect: the melodies (duh). There are chunks upon chunks of harmonies and melodies exhibited on all the tracks. They're all achieved perfectly due to the obtaining of the riff creature Michael Amott on the Symphonies of Sickness' tour circa '89. It's very mind-blowing that a couple of guitars oozing different high-noted chromatic notes influenced and generated one of the most melodic metal genres. Imagine the hours of effort and musical studying to perform and compose each harmony and melody just to be not dissonant, and you know that if a "harmony" is dissonant, it gives you an earache.

The guitars have a stupidly heavy tone, bass-boosted, what do you expect? - but there's one aspect that shakes my soul to the core: there's almost no bass, only if you configure some volume presets on Windows and then you can hear, or just putting the song into any hawker shop speaker. Comparing Heartwork's tone to Necroticism seems like a high jump, I agree, but it looks like just one little change on the amp settings compared to Reek of Putrefaction to Symphonies of Sickness. Speaking about it, it's very interesting that Carcass' goregrind and melo-death eras seem like pretty different bands but with the same band members, combining with the fact that Carcass were and are the main monikers of both legendary music genres.

I took the effort to comment about the bass. I tried to remaster some tracks on Reaper, and it sounds heavy as fuck with a clean tone. I saw on the official music video for No Love Lost that Jeff Walker used a five-stringed bass. It's sad that the mixer just vanished the bass, but at least he forgot to erase the bass on songs like "This Mortal Coil", but the bass only appears when the guitars play high notes. I think that's ironic that the partial removal of the bass is not very commented on by Carcass' fanbase; even on the Full Dynamic version, it's pretty erased. And it's pretty ironic that Jeff Walker became the main member of the band after Bill Steer stopped to do any vocals but liked the idea to rip out the bass on some sections of this full-length. Imagine how many funky basslines were partially butchered.

Jeff Walker's vocals are an eternal legacy that will be unleashed upon the aeons of death metal; his vocals were more harsh in Carcass' early days. I tried for days to seek out how to do his vocals, but I never found it. The only method I've found was by myself: just force up your throat to the most low or high vocals you can get. Jeff also does some sections that I love to listen to, like the first verses of No Love Lost and Blind Bleeding the Blind. I don't know if it's a warm-up or just an additional aesthetic. But I would extremely presume that Heartwork would be heavier than it is if Bill Steer singed along with Jeffrey Walker.

It's too hard to write an overall for this full-length, so I think that the final words will be just: listen to this, the most praise-worthy death metal album ever.

A work of (h)art - the pun was too obvious - 90%

Lord_Of_Diamonds, January 24th, 2022

Carcass was really dedicated to this record. They demoed the entire thing before going on tour for their newest album at the time, Necroticism, and played it in its entirety when they were on that tour. They famously spent the vast majority of the actual album recording process painstakingly searching for their ideal guitar tone, which involved duct-taping two guitar cabinets together and nearly ditching their producer, Colin Richardson, after they were dissatisfied with the results he was getting. It must have been hell to create this album, especially for those who had to work with the band in the studio. However, all that trouble points toward the conclusion that Carcass knew somewhere deep down that their music was worth going to such lengths to get it just right. Due to the quality of the end result and the endurance of this record as an influence on extreme metal and a universally recognized classic album that people still spin to this day, it's safe to say that they hit the nail on the head.

For something often cited as being melodic death metal or at the very least an influence on melodic death metal, this album is not very melodic. When it is melodic, though, it's not melodic in the way that a Gothenburg-style melodeath release would be, with minor-scale third harmonies and Maiden-inspired melodic contours all over the place. Instead, the album's melodic content mostly boils down to brief melodic licks or isolated passages within a song that might be harmonized to a diminished interval, minor scale, or not harmonized at all, just a little bit less atonal than typical death metal. The most consistently melodic things on the album are the mostly awful solos, which are usually only memorable and worthy contributions to the song when they're not played by Mike Amott. Mostly it's pure death metal with Bill Steer's distinctive riffing style and occasional dropping into mid-tempo groove territory (see "Embodiment" and the baffling doofus chugga-chugga breakdown in "Blind Bleeding the Blind"). Fortunately, there's plenty of variation among the track list. The faster songs like "Heartwork", "Carnal Forge", "Arbeit macht Fleisch", and "This Mortal Coil" (probably the most straight-forward melodic track here) never fail to kick the music into high gear before boredom sets in. The rare feat of combining great songwriting and extreme metal in a way that doesn't make the end result cheesy is accomplished admirably here, with memorable choruses everywhere and signature guitar licks for almost every song like the harmonized intro lick in "Carnal Forge" and the fourth harmony Symbolic and Sound of Perseverance-era Death-style lick in "Arbeit macht Fleisch" that predates those two albums by no insignificant amount of time.

The album's lyrics are not typical death metal subject matter, and certainly a departure from the gory, sometimes medical themes of previous Carcass releases. The closest that this album comes to those themes is "Carnal Forge", which turns the simple description of gore into a description of how exposure to violence and gore traumatizes and desensitizes people to it. "Death Certificate" also touches on the subject of dehumanization and the lack of worth that human life has in some forms. At other times, the album focuses on bleak discussions of human emotions and nature, like on "Buried Dreams" and "No Love Lost". None of it is particularly pleasant stuff, but it is a perfect fit for the album's cold, surgically precise and (at the risk of sounding corny) mature sound.

I don't like discussing music in terms of "feel", because it's such a vague, unquantifiable thing, but this album's distinctive "feel" deserves mentioning. The performances on this album are frantic and a bit rough around the edges, perhaps a remnant of the band's grind days. You can hear the struggling in Ken Owen's blast beat sections to play at such speeds and Jeff Walker's vocals are always a bit ahead of everything, like he's trying to rush through the song as fast as possible. When combined with the pristine sounds and mixing, these characteristics create a distinct contrast that a modern album with this level of production quality might not have due to the use of studio enhancements.

Since the stressful recording process of this album was already mentioned, it's only fitting that this album's mixing and production is covered. For something released as early as it was, this album sounds incredibly modern, from the artillery fire kick and snare drum to the massive rhythm guitar tone. Surprisingly, the tone was accomplished with G12T-75 Celestion speakers, which are not well-liked in the modern metal world. One of the most interesting things about this album's mixing job is the fact that all the album's low end heaviness comes from the guitars instead of the bass, which takes a considerable back seat. Such levels of low end in the guitars as the ones found on this album would be completely unacceptable in most modern studio practices, not to mention the bass being mixed low and barely contributing to the rhythm section. Yet somehow, Carcass and Colin Richardson made it work on this album. Heartwork is a very influential sound, and one that would be even more standardized and elaborated on when Richardson, along with Andy Sneap, mixed a bunch of mainstream heavy music albums in the early 2000s.

This is an album that keeps on giving. The more I listen to it, the more impressed I am at how ahead of its time it was with both music and sound. It is a shame that none of Carcass's subsequent works lived up to or surpassed this album's quality, but it is enough of an achievement to be proud of for a lifetime, because few other albums could be as worthy of a game-changer for extreme metal lyrics, extreme metal melody, and extreme metal mixing as this one is. Heartwork certainly isn't a straight-up sudden appearance of the level of melody on Slaughter of the Soul or the very slickly produced sound of Andy Sneap's 2000s metalcore mixes, but it sure laid some groundwork and, in this case, verifies the old adage: "The original is always the best."

Carcass - Heartwork - 100%

Orbitball, March 30th, 2021
Written based on this version: 1993, CD, Earache Records

This is by far the most interesting, noteworthy, original, innovative Carcass release I've ever heard. 'Necroticism...' was excellent but this release is beyond excellent. Probably one of the most original melodic death metal albums I've ever heard. Those B-tuned guitars, Walker's vocal outputs, Owen's intense drumming and both Michael/Bill amazingly orchestrate on guitars. They came up with such thick riffs but amazingly melodic. Everything seems to fit here, absolutely everything. This album is underrated by people on here (MA), I don't think there's a more perfect melodic death release than this.

'Necroticism...' opened up avenues of success for the band the way 'Symphonies...' did for death/grind. And of course 'Reek...' was at the almost beginning with grindcore as we knew it. Carcass and Napalm Death both. But here came 'Heartwork' with just impeccable originality and likability. Every song on 'Heartwork' to me is good. The leads are probably Michael at his best. They aren't as good with Arch Enemy than they are on this album. And when I say Arch Enemy, I mean all of their albums. Christopher Amott smokes his brother, but Michael is way about feel. You can hear him on the wah-pedal on here. It's so prevalent.

So it's great that the band is still active with the tragedy about Ken Owen who cannot play drums for the band because of his brain hemorrhage. It's a darn shame, but I think people can still appreciate his longtime work with the band. Bill kind of lost a little bit of his lead wicked style, but 'Surgical Steel' is still pretty amazing. 'Heartwork' came out when I was a junior in high school and boy did I fire it up when I heard it. Those were some good times on the guitar, ABSOLUTELY. 'Heartwork' smoked most melodic metal bands in the 90's like At The Gates, In Flames, et al. They blew the scene out of control after this.

This will remain to be my favorite Carcass release every and a top melodic metal release ever. You can measure it up to 'Slaughter of the Soul' by At The Gates, 'The Jester Race' by In Flames, et al. I'm not sure who did the bulk of songwriting on this one, it would probably be mutual between Amott and Steer. They put everything together and made a milestone of a record. My favorite parts of the album are the guitars. But I like the vocals and drums too. The production quality is fantastic. I wouldn't trade the guys in from Earache for anyone. They are just all about band's successes. Own this, TODAY!

In the cold, callous dignity of the mass grave... - 100%

Inhuman_Abomination, October 25th, 2020
Written based on this version: 1994, CD, Columbia Records

A long, long time ago, in a small Alberta town; far, far away. A friend of mine had found Heartwork in a dingy pawn-shop in the city, aptly named Uncle Ed's. Monday morning, back at school, he comes to me and tells me he has found something that I must hear. Come lunchtime, we pile into his shit box truck, and he starts playing me the title track 'Heartwork'. I was beside myself; how had I never heard this? So there we were, a -20 degree winter day, ripping around town with the windows down so we could share it with the world! I eventually acquired a copy of my own and proceeded to play the shit out of that disc. From start to finish, this album never stopped playing for a year. Even when I became super ill, I cranked it; there was no occasion that I didn't have this album playing. I still have this album on heavy rotation, as they became one of my favourite bands.

Carcass is one of those bands that people are split on, with their constant changing of styles. Some people gave up on them after they stopped being goregrind and had less than 20 songs per album, and come Necroticism, others jumped ship for... reasons?!?! When Heartwork came out, the knives also came out; people either loved it or felt fucking betrayed. Me, on the other hand, I love it all; there hasn't been one album thus far that I haven't liked. Perhaps the post comeback material is not as stellar, but I still enjoy it.

Heartwork is particularly special to me, being my first introduction to Carcass. There isn't one track on this album that I don't enjoy. Sure some tracks stand out a bit more, but for the most part, they are all fucking wicked. It wasn't till I found copies of Symphonies of Sickness and Necroticism - Descanting the Insalubrious that I knew how different this album was. A few tracks such as 'Carnal Forge', 'Arbeit Macht Fleisch', and 'Death Certificate' bear a closer resemblance to 'Incarnated Solvent Abuse's style, but closer is a relative term, but all these songs are quite at home with this melodic death metal. So what was it that was sparking such stylistic leaps? I think Mike Amott's inclusion on the supporting tours for Symphonies of Sickness and his contributions to Necroticism is evidence of his influence on the directional shift seen on Heartwork. The people that hate it scapegoat Mikey, and there is a good reason; his hooks sink in real deep into the meat of this album. Cuts like 'Embodiment' and 'Doctrinal Expletives' have Amott's fingerprints all over them and they provide a lot of the dynamics that make Heartwork such a memorable record. With Mike leaving, the band shifted style again. Change like this is the nature of bands; remove a piece no matter how integral or minute their contributions, there will be some change in sound. Is Heartwork that far removed from Reek, Symphonies, or Necroticism? The answer is yes, but the basic fundamentals still make up the core of Carcass's sound. Carcass was obviously doing something right, considering how many bands they influenced over multiple sub-genres of death metal. Again, Mike Amott played a huge part in that and went on to form the biggest band of melodic death metal, using the blueprints of Heartwork, which he helped create.

Song-wise the writing is more streamlined; one could say more verse/chorus in their approach. Mostly absent are the more progressive song structures that were very present on Symphonies and Necroticism. The more traditional approach, definitely lends to a higher accessibility to the music. Another change that seemed to be a major sticking point with a lot of the album's detractors was the drifting away from their lyrical use of medical jargon. Perhaps they had felt that there was no more land to conquer and warranted a change. Lyrically, the topics might have changed, but his approach to writing them did not. Jeff swapped out the overt medical dictionary terminology for an overt dictionary vocabulary to articulate topics more relevant to him personally. I liked the medical text lyrics, but I prefer more serious topics, so this is an aspect I really thought was an improvement. Gone as well are the named leads, a trait that I thought was quite unique, and it would have been rad if they had kept doing it.

Heartwork contains some of my favorite riffs and solos of all time, and they are fucking tight. It's not the tight we know in 2020, with sterile drone precision, but it's a real band that rehearses and plays together regularly. There is nothing on here that makes you second guess whether its studio tricks or if Bill Steer and Mike Amott actually pulled that off in a take. Vocally Jeff Walker has always been my favorite, and this is his best performance. The fact that Bill Steer decided not to continue his co-vocal role was a disappointment and is the main reason that Necroticism will always be my favorite Carcass album. Ken Owen, never being the most tech drummer, but what he lacked in skills, he excelled in creativity. Less involved here than he was on the previous disc, but Ken still kills it! Colin Richardson is back at the wheel in the producer role. Outside of the band, I would venture to say that he is equally responsible for giving them the signature sound that other bands tried to emulate. A couple of years surrounding 93/94, he was a machine; and in high demand for a reason. Everything on this album is thick and heavy and finds all the right tones. All the guitars have bite, the vocals are sharp but still raspy, and the drums sound real. Almost all these things are absent from most metal albums made today.

All these factors combined are the reason that Heartwork is still one of the most talked-about death metal albums of all time. It is praised as genre-defining with albums like Morbid Angel's Covenant, Bolt Thrower's VIth Crusade, and Deicide's Once Upon the Cross. But are those albums as good as their more grimey brothers that ARE the greatest albums of all time? Who knows. Heartwork to me is a flawed perfect, but perfection all the same, as nonsensical as that sounds.

The Black Album of Carcass - 70%

Cannibal Perturbator, October 27th, 2018
Written based on this version: 1993, CD, Earache Records

Things were underway for a big change in 1993. Sepultura had gone groove with Chaos A.D. two years prior and Pantera had hit the record stores with Vulgar Display of Power just a year before. Those two albums practically gave birth to nu-metal. Productions were getting cleaner and technically better and all of a sudden being extremely brutal or satanic seemed passé. Carcass was already a well known act in the grindcore scene and had broken new ground with Necroticism, by turning into a death metal act. And there was a metamorphosis of extreme proportions about to be revealed with Heartwork.

Carcass's early contributions in the scene can't be overestimated. For one, they've been there since the beginning. And they dared to take this music to places no one dared to before. I am talking about the fist two albums.

Heartwork hit the fans with intensity that very few death metal albums ever have. Let's get one thing out of the way first; the production. This is the equivalent of what Metallica achieved with the Black Album. A sound so open, so high fidelity and so punchy that immediately made Scott Burns (the go-to producer for extreme metal of the time) sound redundant. 25 years later that production is as powerful as it was back then. A phenomenal achievement for Colin Richardson who overnight became the premier metal producer of the new age. 1994 came with Machine Head's Burn my Eyes and 1995 with Fear Factory's Demanufacture that pushed Richardson's fame to yet new heights.

So sonically the album is unbeatable. However on closer listen a few issues arise. The groove element is apparent; the music is inherently death metal but presented in its simplest rhythmic form. Easily accessible, well digestible. The melodic element is also very dominant; there are basic melodies that are simplistically mellow and sweet that dress up almost every part. We are not talking about Morbid Angel's dissonance or Suffocation's chaotic madness, but a basic straight up metal lead line melody that goes almost on everything. The solos considered by some tasteful and effective, feel rather out of place with their hard rock sensibilities. This is death metal and solos need to sounds like demonic screams rather than Thin Lizzie leads. Going back to the sound again, the guitars are extremely heavy due to the downtuning, possibly for the first time in history done so successfully. This creates a possible disorientation for the listener, making them think that the music is actually heavier than it is.

I remember how I felt when I listened to Heartwork when it came out. I thought that it sounded (and still do) like Megadeth, Countdown to Extinction (1992) era. I was thinking that Jeff Walker's growl is so similar to Mustain's that if you downtuned Megadeth to the Carcass tuning and made Mustaine sing in growls only, Countdown would sound almost just like Heartwork.

That's not to take anything away for all the strong points of the album. Songs like Carnal Forge and Heartwork have an explosive feeling throughout and the whole album feels like a classic riff factory. I would prefer everything to go faster but maybe the heaviness that comes out compensates for that.

To close up I have mixed feelings for Heartwork. It took Necroticism to the next level both in terms of sound and served Death Metal to the masses in its most delicious form. But they lost all the edge the had developed with Symphonies of Sickness, their magnum opus in my opinion. As a kid I knew Carcass was this extreme gore death monster. And all of a sudden they're easy-listening for metal heads. But some would call this move maturity. Definitely worked better for them financially speaking.

Carcass - Heartwork - 100%

goflotsam, August 24th, 2018
Written based on this version: 1993, CD, Earache Records

One would argue that Slaughter of the Soul by At the Gates is considered the greatest melodic death metal album of all time. For one, I could agree. However, the genre's origins pretty much date back to 1993 in which Heartwork, the fourth studio album by Carcass was released. It was the second and final album to feature Michael Amott on lead guitar and would see Carcass blending the old school death metal sound (as displayed on predecessor Necroticism - Descanting the Insalubrious) with the traditional heavy metal instrumentation inspired by NWoBHM bands such as Iron Maiden and Saxon. Coincidentally, Carcass which is also a British band, ended up becoming more influential with this album having now inspired not just grindcore and death metal, but also melodeath bands in their career. And this was when their label at the time, Earache had a deal with a major label, in this case it was Columbia. It would serve as the band's breakthrough album and high point in their initial career.

The musicianship that is displayed in Heartwork is quite superb, to be honest. Bill Steer and Michael Amott perform some of the most virtuosic guitar solos ever seen in extreme music, as displayed in tracks such as "Buried Dreams", "Arbeit Macht Fleisch", and "Carnal Forge". Ken Owen's drumming feels very thrash metal-inspired in many ways as he incorporates blast beat drumming in many of the songs deeper cuts such as "Doctrinal Expletives" and the aformentioned "Carnal Forge". On the vocal side of things, it is only Jeff Walker handling vocal duties as there really isn't any need of Steer or Owen for a melodeath album, especially Heartwork. Walker's bass playing is just as strong as previous records, if not more focused. All four of these musicians showcase their synergy at the highest level on the fourth track, "Heartwork", which is considered by many to be Carcass' signature song and one the best metal songs of the 1990s. Unfortunately, it would be the last time Steer and Amott would be able to play guitar together on an album, since the latter would later create Arch Enemy, who (eventually) became one of the most divisive melodic death metal bands in history.

In terms of lyrics and song titles, Heartwork doesn't really have clinically gross song titles such as "Corporal Jigsore Quandary" or "Exhume to Consume". However the lyrics in its remain gross, albeit not as excessively as its predecessors. Since I don't really listen to death metal for lyrics, I'm okay with that. But if you're going to play this album with an eight year-old in your car who doesn't know what heavy metal is, make sure the kid doesn't say "Dad, what's the scary man saying?". Really, kids can look up lyrics online and it can mess them up. Unless you're a "Metal Dad" and loves to raise children on heavy metal (ie. Jose Mangin). However, I do recommend this album to doctors of all kinds, they would completely relate to an album like this. In fact I think doctors would benefit from every Carcass album (minus Swansong), but they should definitely start with Heartwork since its definitely the best starting point for getting into Carcass.

Overall, I'd have to give this album 100%. I love listening to it and it makes me feel like I'm playing air guitar in my bedroom. Even though I'm sad that Michael Amott couldn't come back to play on Surgical Steel.

When Expectations Are Quashed - 81%

lonerider, September 2nd, 2017

For all the good things that have been said about this classic release by one of extreme metal’s most influential bands, this column would provide the perfect opportunity to crash the party and play the role of iconoclast, declaring that Heartwork is severely overrated and nowhere near as good as people would have you believe. However, since I have somewhat of a soft spot for Carcass and Heartwork was one of the very first extreme metal albums I owned, I’m not quite ready to switch to all-out iconoclasm mode. Besides, it would be a rather brash overstatement to call Heartwork severely overrated; it may not be all that great, but it still is a very good album. At the same time, I will not shy away from stating that it may have received more praise than it actually deserves.

Coming on the heels of the almost immaculate Necroticism, which arguably marked Carcass’s finest hour, it was definitely a tall task to live up to the towering expectations of a fan base looking for more material in the same vein as the hugely successful Necroticism. Hence Carcass probably made the right decision in not trying to replicate that same formula, but instead continue the natural evolution already beginning with Symphonies of Sickness and taking them ever further down the road from goregrind/grindcore over death grind/death metal to, finally, melodic death metal.

Heartwork is of course just that: melodic death metal in its purest sense, and one of the earliest examples of that particular subgenre as well; which, by the way, is not quite the same as the melodic black/death metal coming out of Sweden in the early nineties (though boundaries are fluent). It is also not to be confused with that horrific metalcore trend of later vintage, which was clearly influenced by melodic death metal but ultimately bastardized it to a degree where all the two had in common were gruff vocals and melodic guitar harmonies.

While the melodic death metal leanings were already quite prominent on Necroticism, that record still featured some unmistakeable remnants of the band’s more chaotic, unpredictable and sometimes downright ugly (in a good way) grindcore style. On Heartwork, those remnants are all but gone, but that doesn’t mean the music can’t still be delightfully gritty and “ugly” at times. It is hardly by accident that those songs still bearing subtle traces of Carcass’s stylistic roots are among the best tracks on Heartwork. Take “This Mortal Coil”, for instance: beginning and ending with some blistering blast beats and otherwise anticipating some of the death ‘n’ roll flavor of the band’s future output, it still emanates that slightly chaotic, reckless vibe so characteristic of Carcass’s earlier work. The same can be said of “Carnal Forge” and “Arbeit macht Fleisch”, two fast, brutal and decisive strikes displaying more variation and outright aggressiveness than some of the lesser tunes on Heartwork. This, ladies and gentlemen, is real melodic death metal (the emphasis lying on death metal), not that whiny abomination created by latter-day In Flames and the entire armada of metalcore clones.

The flirtations of axe duo Steer/Amott with more traditional heavy metal sounds, most obvious in their lead work and soloing, are a nice touch, giving the two guitarists ample opportunity to put on a show and incorporate some shamelessly catchy hooks and melodies. This definitely holds true for the gorgeous title track, one of the most iconic works of the band’s career and recipient of extensive MTV airplay back in the day. That absolutely ferocious main riff driving the verses is a thing of beauty and the chorus is so memorable as to stick in your head almost instantly. It’s not a very complex song, but it certainly is immensely effective. As a whole, it’s safe to say Heartwork is a lot more streamlined than anything Carcass had done up to that point. I wouldn’t necessarily call it more commercial, because what Carcass did here was still utterly repulsive to the trend-oriented alternative/grunge crowd of the early nineties, who considered themselves oh so rebellious for being into something as uncompromisingly badass as (gasp) Nirvana, Clawfinger, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam and the like. (Yeah, I was being sarcastic.)

That being said, songs like “Buried Dreams”, “No Love Lost”, “Embodiment” or “Blind Bleeding the Blind” all adhere to a rather simple structure, a generally slower pace and very limited amount of riffs and tempo changes. As far as I’m concerned, that formula works okay on some tracks, while on others the final result is rather tepid. The best of that bunch is arguably the opener “Buried Dreams”, boasting a monstrous main riff (benefited by the voluminous production and badass guitar tone) and a particularly awesome vocal performance by Jeff Walker. Having scrapped Bill Steer’s ultra-low gurgling grunts, which still showed up occasionally on Necroticism, vocal duties are now handled exclusively by Jeff Walker, and he certainly lives up to the task by delivering his finest vocal performance to date. “Buried Dreams” is a good example for this, as Walker spews out his lyrics with even more black bile and hatred than usual.

Unfortunately, the more groove-oriented “No Love Lost”, with its chunky riffing and rather bland chorus, isn’t nearly as good. The band even shot an official music video for this one, and only God knows why. “Embodiment” and “Blind Bleeding the Blind” are both longer tracks, hovering around or slightly exceeding the five-minute mark, and both, while not exactly great, are a lot better than “No Love Lost”. Particularly “Embodiment” is a much more dynamic song featuring some very aggressive riffs, nifty solos and a nice galloping part toward the end to keep things interesting. “Blind Bleeding the Blind” starts out relatively fast but quickly reverts back to that chunky riffing style and ultimately doesn’t contain enough intriguing ideas or “wow” moments to be considered anything more than merely decent.

In all, six out of ten tunes on Heartwork are under four minutes long, marking another clear departure from the more meandering, complex style found on Necroticism. Two of those shorter tunes come at the very end, and while they aren’t quite as bland as “No Love Lost”, neither “Doctrinal Expletives” nor “Death Certificate” manages to recapture the magic of the album’s best moments. “Death Certificate” is at least a little faster and quite brutal and therefore clearly the better of the two, whereas “Doctrinal Expletives”, despite its short length, doesn’t sound very cohesive or inspired at all and is arguably the album’s worst cut along with the tedious “No Love Lost”.

In all, Heartwork, despite being just over forty minutes long, is a slightly inconsistent album that goes from dizzying heights – especially the title track, “Carnal Forge” and “Arbeit macht Fleisch” – to some quite disappointing lows (“Doctrinal Expletives”, “No Love Lost”). Luckily, however, none of these lows last long enough to taint the album beyond redemption, as the good, inspired moments far outweigh the bad, lackluster ones. The strong production also helps matters tremendously, including a heavily distorted, brutal guitar tone that makes a couple of riffs sound better and more menacing than they actually are. While some may scoff at the rather glossy sound on Heartwork, it certainly fits the album’s overall concept and has to be considered one of its strongest assets.

For all its historical significance, Heartwork is far from a perfect album – based purely on compositional merits, I’d even rate Surgical Steel higher than this. It does, however, offer some downright amazing tunes and ends up as a highly entertaining affair.

Choicest cuts: Buried Dreams, Carnal Forge, Heartwork, Arbeit macht Fleisch

Nothing Works like a Total Eclipse of the Heart - 100%

bayern, May 15th, 2017

When the three English behemoths of grindcore (Carcass, Bolt Thrower, Napalm Death) started marching in the mid/late-80’s, the fanbase knew instantly that the metal scenery would never be the same again; its brutalization was going to take much more tangible forms in the years to come… if we have to be very honest, though, grindcore didn’t spring from the metal field; it was entirely a product of the hardcore arena and, partially, the punk one. Still, it was inevitable the merger of the two fractions at some point in time, at least when the grindcore practitioners had acquired bigger musical skills…

of the three mentioned bands Carcass are by far the most commercially successful and the most creative outfit. They were constantly pushing the boundaries of what was possible within the metal template, unlike the Napalms who settled for their hyper-active death/grind/core barrage on “Harmony Corruption”, and haven’t looked away; or Bolt Thrower who found their doom-laden, battle-like niche with “Warmaster” and stuck with it throughout their subsequent discography. This wasn’t the Carcass way, though, as the Liverpudian gang already sounded more proficient on the death/grindcore hybrid “Symphonies of Sickness”, not to mention the fabulous “Necroticism…” which twisted cavernous riff-work must have thrown half the wannabe technical death metal practitioners at the time in despair.

The band would have owned the technical death metal arena if they had voted to elaborate on those “insalubrious” sounds, but for them a priority was the catchiness and the accessibility, and arguably the wider exposure. And here it was, all handsomely achieved, on the album reviewed here, the work of art that single-handedly invented the melodic death metal template, the most massive “wagon” from the death metal “train” all these years. And not only but this new template was embraced literally over night by the fanbase, and suddenly death metal was a part of the mainstream crossing “swords” with the groove, the gothic and the second wave of black metal. The album sold hundreds of thousands of copies worldwide making Carcass a household name nearly matching the fame of the Holy Three (Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden). And man, was it way more than those proverbial 15-min of fame…

so how has this feat been achieved? To begin with, some of the “Necroticism…” brutality had to be sacrificed to a large extent, there was no way around it. And, those characteristic twisted miasmas had to be toned down, otherwise the guys would have found themselves buried in the deep underground right next to the Finns Demilich. Toned down, not completely removed… with those two stipulations taken care of, nothing could stop this compelling roller-coaster which starts with “Buried Dreams”, the ultimate mid-paced death metal shredder, Michael Amott and Bill Steer’s duels erupting into a tornado of sharp cutting riffs the precise musical “slaughter” adroitly supervised by the hellish, apocalyptic shrieks of Jeff Walker. Yes, this would be different from anything the guys had composed previously although “Carnal Forge” speeds up admirably recalling the preceding opus in every way except in the increased sense of melody reflected in both the lead and the riff department regardless of the hyper-active way of execution also featuring isolated blast-beats. “No Love Lost” stirs some controversy with its openly mainstream power/thrashy flavour the riffs developing in a stomping, nearly proto-groovy fashion Amott’s stylish leads saving this number from being viewed as a filler. The title-track takes care of business right after with fast ripping guitars and gorgeous virtuoso melodies the band shifting the tempos at will creating a supreme shredfest pulled out mostly within the mid-paced confines save for the furious main blast-beating motif.

“Embodiment” prefers the mid-tempo parametres again, but there’s nothing wrong with this consistent, unbroken stride which is carved by those unforgettable melodic tunes and these inimitable screamy leads. Alternation is the name of the game, and “This Mortal Coil” is a death metal rager with fierce rapidfire riffs the latter reshuffled a bit by the merry gallops which appear out of the blue bringing the winds of thrash in a charmingly nonchalant manner; both sides take turns throughout although it’s not aggression that will rule the proceedings here, “Arbeit Macht Fleisch” being another vigorous speedster with even less controlled blast-beating arrangements and devastating fretwork bordering on the technical. “Blind Leading the Blind” elaborates on the technical arrangements by mixing it more in the pace sector with stomping rhythms more amply utilized among the omnipresent speedy crescendos. “Doctrinal Expletives” is a brilliant pounding technicaller the band winding vortexes of inventive, shape-shifting riffage which is pure dramatic head-spinning bliss without a single fast-paced dash. The antidote to this grand psychedelia is “Death Certificate”, a smattering headbanger with vitriolic intricate pyrotechnics forming a fantastic contrasting melee with the preceding number, the binding link between the two being a cool slower passage served in the second half.

A truly pioneering (heart)work, this album catapulted Carcass into the stratosphere its hints faithfully followed by the guys’ Swedish counterparts who based the entire Gothenburg scene on them. The melodic pirouettes of the Swedes acquired some more characteristic nuances with time, but the seeds were planted by this audacious British bunch who also generated a legion of more or less direct emulators (Exhumed, Ghoul, Golem, Impaled, etc.) all of them alive and well at present. “Swansong” wasn’t such a controversial effort having in mind the several more laid-back power/thrashy gimmicks encountered here, and combined with the “Wake up and Smell the Carcass” compilation it nicely reveals another, different side of Carcass, removed from any death metal “atrocities”, a more or less logical step from the band evolution.

“Swansong” is “a swansong”, what the band could possibly do after such a tell-tale album-title… they had to split up, but only to rise from the medical textbooks in the new millennium with the excellent “Surgical Steel”. A tasty compendium of their last three instalments, this opus brought the band back in the game with full force seeing again hordes of fans ready to worship at the altar of these unique “death medical examiners”. Yes, the guys were badly missing from the scene, and it would be up to them to bring back the glorious days of British death metal in a heartbeat.

Masterpiece or Self Masturbatory? - 89%

Deathdoom1992, August 12th, 2016
Written based on this version: 1993, CD, Earache Records

Since the dawn of metal, bands dread and strive for their careers to avoid a tag, "selling out" and a brutally honest descriptor: "polarisation". Carcass hit both of these however with their '93 release Heartwork. Depending on which side of the fence you fall, this is either one of the greatest albums of all time or a heinous act by a once beloved goregrind band, the final nail in the coffin, the point where they pissed away their last remaining goodwill from the underground. They'd undergone an extreme sonic makeover since late '89 from the release that hardcore fans consider the band's finest hour: Symphonies of Sickness. But if Necroticism pushed the boundaries, this positively drove a truck through them. On the bright side for them, critics loved this, it won them a whole new bunch of fans (to replace the old ones who quit in disgust), it secured the members pensions and spawned a whole new genre: melodeath, or melodic death metal in full. And you can tell by my rating which era I prefer.

In 1992, things were looking good for Carcass. Out of their three studio albums, one is much beloved by the British underground and a favourite of John Peel and two are regarded as classics. That said, the band was progressively making their music more and more melodic. Symphonies of Sickness had incorporated more conventional strategies than Reek, Necroticism stepped fully away from grindcore, so it was clear that Carcass were never ones to rest on their laurels. As Bill Steer said in an interview, "There was no novelty in playing fast anymore". So they didn't. The songs were slowed down fully, melodic, cleaner guitars were introduced, Steer's brutal gutturals removed and Walker's noticeably toned down to more of a harsh bellow. Unfortunately, it also marked the beginning of the decline of the band; the wheels really began to fall off in the next two or three years.

I'll start with the title track and lead single "Heartwork". It is a shining example of the newer, more intricate Carcass. It is also literally perfect, from the more aggressive verses to the surprisingly catchy chorus. Directly after this we have "Embodiment", the most melodic song on the album, plodding easily for five and a half minutes; a great listen. Fortunately, there is an excellent song harking back to older Carcass: "No Love Lost", with loud growling and low pitched guitars throughout. The music is complex, professional, and also well recorded and produced, allowing each element to shine on it's own. I'll mention the cover artwork also; a Giger piece which sums up the new professionalism and accuracy of the band.

Not-so-fantastic parts: when the band tries to produce a more deathy track, in most cases it falls on its face. Example: "Blind Bleeding the Blind", a pointless song which gets lost halfway between brutality and melody. Another issue is one that sticks out in my mind is the question, "Is this new-found tunefulness to do with commerciality?" I fear it might be, given the emphasis on a track as a single, brilliant though it may be, production of a music video, and the band jumping ship from Earache to a major label, Sony/Columbia. And after all this was the album that gave the band their only commercial exposure... Concerning thoughts.

The first thing to note instrumentally, my personal standout is Ken Owen's groovy drumming. He really builds a great foundation on which the rest of the instruments layer, quite incredible considering his previously role was to hit as hard and play as fast as he could. Walker's bass is solid for a player who wasn't at this stage massively technically skilled but really adds a move-your-feet kind of layer to the rhythm section. Steer and Amott are again simply awesome, playing complex patterns which fit the music fantastically well, guitars which you just want to bang your head to. No one player is poor, they're all enthralling.

Any album that kicks off a movement must be at least half-decent, and this sits at the top of the pile, excelling in everything it attempts. If every band has one great album in them, then Carcass can't just be any band, with half of their studio albums being exercises in musical brilliance. Yeah, it's damn good.

Track highlights: "Heartwork", "This Mortal Coil", "Buried Dreams", "Death Certificate", "Embodiment".

Yup, half of the album is highlights.

Non-cliche melodic death - 79%

gasmask_colostomy, September 1st, 2015

I'm slightly shocked by the relatively low number of reviews 'Heartwork' has attracted on the Metal Archives. Bearing in mind that At the Gates' 'Slaughter of the Soul' has attracted more than 20 and In Flames ' The Jester Race' is breathing down the neck of the same figure, why have these guys not seen quite the same level of scrutiny? Sure, 'Reek of Putrefaction' might have been slightly more significant in changing the playing field for extreme metal via the birth of goregrind, but Carcass precede At the Gates reaching the same stylistic plateau by a good couple of years. I'm not going to go into that debate of "who started melodic death metal", but these guys are often forgotten, perhaps because the Liverpudlians were so far from the epicentre in Sweden.

What I do think is more important is the way that Carcass didn't seem to conform to any of the cliches of melodeath. There are some bands who, even on first listen, sound intensely familiar and almost hackneyed in their repetition of the genre's tropes. Usually it isn't the first wave of bands who are guilty of this, but if I think about how many times I've been reminded of In Flames when listening to a late-90s Scandinavian release, it makes me very glad that 'Heartwork' hasn't been ripped off nearly so much. The style here is quite distinctly rooted in death metal and goes far beyond the vocals to the churning thrash riffs, double bass pummelling, and aura of sickness that I don't often hear coming from Sweden. The pace is faster and less bouncy than most melodeath, though that isn't to say that a song like 'Blind Bleeding the Blind' doesn't have groove or hooks, because those elements are certainly present too. I get more of a feeling that something has been transmitted directly from Death to Carcass, rather than feeling that certain tropes of the deathly sound have been chosen to augment melodic heavy metal. The drumming and pace of the riffs is about 70% brutal, but often alternates with more spacious parts that never make the album feel too crowded, simply more exciting and varied. The leads, of course, display much more melody and change the feel of these songs from oppressive to uplifting.

The basic parts of the band all work well, which is important. I think that the flatter, more steel-edged guitar tone suits this music well and the alternation between heads down riffing and melodic breaks maintains interest, even if the transitions are occasionally a little too frequent. Michael Amott turns out more interesting riffs here than he did with Arch Enemy and naturally his solos sound great, preserving just enough technicality and histrionic shredding to steer clear of dampening the heaviness. Bill Steer is important as well, because he always plays his bass like a death metal instrument, thickening the assault of both strings and percussion, so that we can hear both the crispness of the riffs and the bludgeoning of the drums clearly, while allowing him to make his own impression on occasion. His voice is also a big factor in this album's success, because - even though he doesn't vary his tone much - his dry bark is capable of a large range of expression and can add intensity to the faster sections, also relaxing when needed. The drums aren't very crisp, but have a lot of attack to them: the blastbeats are on point, while the slower sections have a steadiness and weight to them that can be even more satisfying, like in the mid-paced 'Embodiment', which remains consistently interesting for 5 minutes.

When examining the songs closely, I don't get the same feeling as I do with 'Slaughter of the Soul', where I could probably mention something about every track, yet that album has been described as catchy and accessible to a fault. The more memorable songs here tend to have slower sections or more pronounced solos: 'Embodiment' stands out as the most intricate in its continued progression, while 'No Love Lost' prefigures the more groovy death and roll that Carcass would explore on 'Swansong'. 'Arbeit Macht Fleish' might be the heaviest and nastiest, certainly if one judges from the lyrics, which are the poetic equivalent of a torn and oil-spattered corpse; this song contains some of the best all-out riffing of the album. A few songs blend together a little and lose some impact, though none are especially disappointing, usually pulling a nice solo out if the riffs are mediocre or some smart vocal work if the music takes a back seat.

In fact, having come to the end of this review, I feel like I've answered my own question about why there are fewer reviews of 'Heartwork' than other melodeath staples. There's something that separates these guys from the Swedes - more than just nationality - and they are simply satisfactory to listen to, rather than splitting opinion. Don't get me wrong, I like 'Heartwork'; I just don't like it passionately, nor do I think I could ever despise it.

The first half is good, the second lasts forever - 68%

PorcupineOfDoom, December 13th, 2014

Among many other things I have recently been recommended to listen to, Heartwork by Carcass was the one that I felt the biggest pull towards. Despite the fact that Carcass is known as a grindcore band, I was assured that this album was melodic death metal, and one of the best melodeath albums at that. Many people have claimed it to be a classic, so that should be as good a reason as any to check it out.

Since the lead guitarist is Michael Amott, I was fairly certain that there'd be some interesting guitar sections on Heartwork. That part doesn't disappoint, and there are plenty of enjoyable moments. Sometimes it feels like they're a bit too far apart though, and I kind of wish there were more melodic hooks finding their way through the thick riffs that play across most of the album. There are also a lot of time where the leads lack any real feeling and it doesn't have any effect on me.

I also find the vocals to be poor. They're just not very nice to listen to, a weak snarl that doesn't fit in with the riffs pouring out of the guitars. They detract a great amount from everything else, because while they might fit with a band like Kalmah, for Carcass they simply don't work. At least the drumming never has any bad moments, everything that Ken Owen does is very solid and enjoyable. He never does anything that sounds out of place either, never just tries to show off. He stays within the bounds of the music and delivers a very good performance.

Other people have mentioned it, and I'm going to have to say that the further on this album goes the more samey it begins to sound. As a result everything drags on forever and by the end you're left thinking that you're listening to Grieving Age (ie. every song feels like it lasts forever). There are good things about the songs that come later on too, but they're more limited and it begins to feel really boring.

By the time that the album was actually done, I was breathing a sigh of relief. Good moments are hidden within this record, but after forty minutes that feel more along the lines of an hour and a half I'm really pretty stumped to name what's good and what's bad. Too many songs feature the same riffs and the vocals never have any kind of unique identification, and the good things get lost inside that.

It's quite obvious why this would be an influential piece of music at its time of release, but there are many far more interesting records than this if you're seeking something of interest. There are some good tracks like the title track, and actually the first half of the album is fairly enjoyable, but by the end the ideas and the songwriting are tired are I find myself looking for something more interesting to listen to.

Periodic Decline - 88%

StainedClass95, July 6th, 2014

This is a fairly well-known album by extreme metal standards. The reason being is likely that Melodic Death Metal is probably the least extreme of this category. For another, Carcass already had something of a reputation, so their next release could build off what came prior. This all sounds cynical, but as evidenced by my score I do enjoy this album. This is the last great thing Carcass ever did. Swansong was a good notch below this and their reunion somewhere in-between. There is no song on this album that is worse than above average. It only gets an 88 because of the way I feel from the track listing.

The vocals have been reduced to one, it's just Walker from here on out. I can't say I miss Owen's bizarre, electronic lines. Steer is a different matter, as I enjoy his vocals as much as Walker's. I also feel that this diminishes the unpredictable aspect of the band, though that may have been the thought process. For that matter as well, Walker's vocals are a good deal different. He no longer uses his vomit-style vocals, and his rasp is toned down. Having said all this, I do still like Walker's vocals. Even weakened he's better than any of the other melodeath vocalists I've heard. It's hard to describe his vocals on here other than to say he sounds ill. He sounds like he's battling some lung disease and is choking on his own blood with every word. It adds to the poignancy of some of the lyrics, but I still miss the older vocals.

Walker is also writing different lyrics. The gory lyrics have been replaced by ones talking about....I really don't know what half the time. They seem pretty random to me. There are still a ton of big words, but now they seem like that kid in class who used the Thesaurus to help him write a paper. The only pattern I see to them is that they're corny. Their turn away from gore was so they could write songs about nothing more intelligible but with phrases that are easier to grab hold of. They're pretty catchy, so I can't complain too much, but those who don't like gore should note what bands turn to otherwise. For many, this represents a change away from their roots, and they reject it. I would say that this is nonsensical. For one, Carcass changed sounds every album, so they didn't really have normal roots. Second, the music here is still largely good. If you're just into extreme metal, this could be a problem, but it's very listenable otherwise.

The guitars on this album are a departure from Necroticism in two ways. The first is the obvious, that it's more melodic. I chalk this up to Amott, though not really critically. The rest of the band would have known where Amott's interests were, and they were probably wanting to go here anyways. The second is the way the guitars come together during the riffing, it's very dense. The guitars on Necroticism were somewhat more separated and angular. This is very reminiscent to me of Carnage's debut, and I find it very interesting that shades from Amott's previous band would manifest on his second outing with them rather than his first. As for their quality, they're very enjoyable. The riffing has a good oomph, and the soloing is very thoughtful. As odd as "thoughtful" might sound, most of the memorable leads aren't blazing. Amott's solos are often sadder than the music around him, and he's guaranteed to bring down whatever intensity was being built. People often compare Amott to Maiden, but Adrian and Dave were never this depressing. I'd actually liken Amott's solos to the kind you'd hear on an old acoustic song but on electric instead. I'm not complaining however, as I find that his solos keep a very heavy feel throughout the album.

The drumming is not bad, but it isn't excellent either. It lacks the speed and aggression of his previous outings, but he gains very little groove out of it. He still tosses in some fills here and there, so not everything is lost, but I'd take his previous two outings over this. The bass is really not doing anything special. I don't count this as a negative, but it does seem odd to me that with slowed down music and better production, that Walker wouldn't have spent a little more time giving himself little fills.

My comment on the track listing is that it gives an odd decline to the songs. If I listen to this all the way through, the quality declines every few songs. The first four equal great, the next three equal very good, and the last three equaling above-average. Isolating individual songs gives me a similar sense, but not to the same extent. A previous reviewer mentioned this as an "endurance test." I don't totally agree with this, but I do feel some of this is at play. The pacing and song length is quite similar from track to track, so there is probably a sort of slight monotony building as you get further along. People often say that this is simpler than Necroticism, and it is, but it also seems simpler than Symphonies. That album had a greater amount of tempo changes within tracks, and the extremes were far greater. Also, there's nothing here that seems more accomplished other than the soloing, with most everything else being lesser.

As far as its impact on metal, it is one of the earliest melodic death metal albums. Admittedly, this isn't a style I care much for, but keeping that in mind, I feel that says something if I'm still giving this album a high score. The vocals, though neutered, contain a character to them, and Walker's choking on blood definitely adds some fire. The lyrics and vocal lines have an infectious nature to them in spite of their incoherence. As for the guitars, you have two of the greatest metal guitarists of all time. Amott managed to get his next band going by simply watering down this album multiple times under the Arch Enemy name; the first few of theirs really do sound like a poor man's version of what you have in front of you. If you like thrash, melodeath, swededeath, or even just heavy metal, then you should enjoy this.

Heartbreaker - 50%

zeingard, October 30th, 2013

You would be hard pressed to find a person with an interest in metal who hasn't listened to 'Heartwork' and doesn't immediately reply with "It's a classic!”. Its influence on the burgeoning melodic death metal scene and the rest of metal for the next decade cannot be understated. The fusion of thrash-inflected traditional heavy metal riffs with death metal tendencies and extended, pentatonic lead work showed that what was once old could be cobbled into something new again.

Even as the years passed 'Heartwork' remained as that pivotal, developmental step and to join in the ritualistic chant of "It's a classic!" felt right. With the announcement that Carcass had released a new album this year, it was hard to fight the urge to spin 'Heartwork' for old time sake and bask in a "classic". The thick layer of dust surrounding its memory was quickly swept away in a tide of familiar notes and Walker's signature vocals, but with every passing minute something felt amiss as the initial excitement and interest waned. It was somewhere around "Blind Leading the Blind" that the feeling of disinterest and unease finally coalesced into a single, succinct thought:

"This is mediocre"

'Heartwork' is far from being a bad album; it is well written and the musicians perform with a surgical precision. It is difficult to not feel that the album is well calculated, that it reeks of obsessive tinkering and meticulous planning. Observing 'Heartwork' as a machine performing cyclic tasks is the one perspective in which it is completely enthralling; it's really adept at doing what it was programmed to do! Dissecting each process is not difficult either, with such an immaculately clean and carefully constructed machine; to the technically inclined there is a lot to learn and absorb from 'Heartwork'.

Unfortunately there's nothing else to take away from it; devoid of any soul, it is all surface with no discernible depth to submerge yourself completely. "Carnal Forge", "Arbeit Macht Fleisch" and the title track all come close to breaking free from the mould so adamantly adhered to elsewhere, but inevitably they rein in what control they lost and segue into pleasant but vacant lead work. Appropriately enough with such an environment the drumming is an admirable mix of powerful and subtle; Ken Owen does a magnificent job of playing effectively within the bounds of the music. To the trained ear he's probably doing nothing special but to the layman, noticing those tom fills, hi-hat accents and the pacing of his double bass patterns gives the often dull music a touch of intrigue. At least one band member was making the most of his time.

If you have fond memories of 'Heartwork' it would be prudent to keep them that way; you may not realise it but you've already picked the carcass clean, and to return will only reward you with disappointment and a stomach as hollow as this album.

Open Heart Surgery - 88%

televiper11, August 7th, 2013

I remember getting an Earache/Columbia promotional cassette in the mail a few weeks before Heartwork was released to the masses in late '93. I had never heard Carcass before and was summarily impressed by their first single, "No Love Lost," a snarling beast of a murder ballad filtered through a prismatically melodic death metal approach. It was dark, mysterious, foreboding but also catchy, enmeshing itself in my head for weeks. I immediately went out and bought Heartwork upon release and soaked in its harshly distorted mindset and eminently listenable death metal hooks. Imagine my surprise then at how divisive this record became. I had friends who hated it, friends who loved it, friends who were indifferent to it -- the overall consensus though (in print and on the street) was that Carcass had sold-out with a catchy album of melodic death metal available through a major label. Even the people who dug the record were cynical enough to feel that way. Now I was a naive teenage unexposed to Carcass's past so for me Heartwork was it: the be-all and end-all of my exposure to them and I thought it was a seminal record that greatly expanded my understanding of the possibilities inherent in extreme musics. I still feel that way, even if I no longer think it to be the front-to-back classic I did then.

Heartwork did (and still does) make me think that metal can be beautiful. "Buried Dreams" is beautiful in its soaring melodic leads and magisterial riffage, even Jeff Walker's sarcastic snarling rasp adds to the pummeling beauty, a contemptuous display of power, talent, and command. "Carnal Forge" is just that, a forge on which Carcass's extreme vision of vitriol is tempered and hammered into fitful submission. This track flays with speed and hostility, reminding listeners that Carcass's expanded, more melodic vision still has a strong component of blasting ruthlessness. Everything comes together on the title track, a fusion of grandiose guitar gestures, sweeping melodic leads, and absolute thrashing depravity. Along with the initial single, this first half of the record is densely packed with some of the most memorable metal ever.

Sadly, the second half is an entirely different animal. "Embodiment" is a sluggish affair of enervating riffs and tired vocals that sound like the band barely lifted a finger to write it. Every time I look at the track list (and this is going on 20 years), I can't quite remember how it goes and when it starts I tend to skip it. "Blind Bleeding The Blind" too is just dull, dull, dull. There's a very monotonous start-stop riff (too blatantly Helmet-ish) that just doesn't work in the context of traditional Carcass architecture. "Doctrinal Expletives" too is a sluggish, start-stop affair slightly buoyed by some nice soloing. Not altogether bad, these tracks still leave the feeling that Carcass can write better riffs than this (as the earlier portion of the record easily proves).

Thankfully, there are some monster songs on side two, particularly the closer "Death Certificate," an outright death metal masterpiece of extremely intricate and precise riffage with a wonderful galloping pull to the beat. I also dig the sheer heaviness of "This Mortal Coil" and the tension and release grind of "Arbeit Macht Fleisch." These tracks salvage an album trending towards average and notch the rating back up a bit.

The production helps too, masking some of the album flaws with stellar sound: bright, tight, harsh, and intense layering of guitar, bass, drums and vocals. In many ways, it is a perfect recording, another Colin Richardson masterpiece and Carcass has the chops to pull it off, unafraid to hide in the murk that swamps so many other death metal recordings. You can hear every note of the dueling guitar harmonies, the bass buzzes harsh beneath, the drums are finely tuned, and Jeff Walker's rasping sneer is right where it should be. Overall, a perfect production job.

History tells us Heartwork was an important record, and clearly its influence shows that it was. Divisive at the time, in many quarters it still is, which is a testament to sub-cultural endurance in an era of ever-shortening attention spans. Heralded as a classic, it is in the above context, but as a front-to-back listening experience, I find enough apparent flaws to keep it from the rarefied air of absolute metal masterpieces. Still, a great record and one I still listen to twenty-years on.

Up there with the best melodic death albums - 89%

psychosisholocausto, February 13th, 2013

In 1993, if you were a fan of extreme metal then you may have been more than a little confused by the latest Carcass release, entitled Heartwork. The Liverpudlian band had previously innovated grindcore and goregrind, before shifting to a more straightforward sound for their third album. However, they completely abandoned both of these styles and started treading into more uncharted waters, this time fusing the NWOBHM guitar harmonies with the crushing brutality found in death metal. The result was Heartwork, a collection of ten songs clocking in at just under forty two minutes and is often considered Carcass' best, as well as one of the finest albums of the Melodic Death Metal genre that it nearly single-handedly created. The guilty party responsible for Heartwork was the guitar duo of Bill Steer and Michael Amott, who wrote this incredible collection of songs. On drums is Ken Owen and Jeff Walker completes the band by providing vocals and playing the bass guitar.

The guitar work is what makes this stand out the most from more "traditional" death metal releases including even the previous album from this band. In place of the frenzy of tremolo picked riffs and umpteen notes per second solos, we have a true sense of passion behind the guitar work. On this release Carcass focused not on playing as fast as humanly possible but instead took the melodic and beautiful riffing of bands such as Iron Maiden and Judas Priest, added their own twist, down tuned the guitars and then recorded it. The opening seconds of the album on the song Buried Dreams speak volumes about this album. Opening with some skull-crushingly heavy chords from Michael Amott, Bill then proceeds to weave some slow, dark, haunting and beautiful lead playing around his band-mates work effortlessly. Embodiment is another cool example of how well the guitar work is written and performed on this album. Whilst the song is consistently as heavy as can be throughout, it still balances the heaviness off against attempting to make something that sounds emotional and catchy. For those wanting something a little faster and even heavier from the band though they have also provided this in the title track that sounds somewhat akin to their previous album although with a little more melody added to it. The soloing off both guitarists on this album is amazing as well. Since the band has no real designated lead player and rhythm guitarist the band is free from the constraints of a normal band hierarchy and, as such, both guitarists throw solos in like the world is about to end. However, whereas many extreme metal bands would have you believe that soloing merely involves playing as fast as possible on the bottom three strings, Carcass' solos bring a little more to the table than that. Take Embodiment for example. Both guitarists solo on that song and neither of them focus on playing as fast as they can, but instead each solo feels well structured, well written and absolutely beautiful to listen to.

The drumming on this album is absolutely ludicrous. Ken Owen is one of the most underrated drummers in extreme metal and this album shows why. Unlike many death metal drummers this album does not utilize blast beats at every turn as the added melody renders them useless. Instead, Ken plays some amazing beats that are always memorable and each one stands out from the others unlike the monotonous standards found in extreme metal. He usually sticks to the middling tempo of the rest of the album but when it is required, he is more than capable of speeding it up a little. No Love Lost sticks out as his best performance on the album, with a couple of nice fills thrown in and a solid beat kept throughout the song that nobody could realistically turn their nose up at. Doctrinal Expletives also shows that he can keep up when the band decides to play a little faster as he keeps a consistent beat going with his double bass pedal. Completing the band is the bass and vocal work from Jeff and whilst the bass is not very audible throughout but is still there at a listenable level and it is decent enough. His vocal work sticks mainly to a middling register of growls and screams, never going too low but always keeping a consistently intense feel to the album. He spits absolute bile on every single song on here with some roars that would make Satan shake. Heartwork provided Jeff a vocal performance to be proud of and stands out as his crowning achievement. Each band member provides a tight performance that never lets up in sounding both intense and beautiful simultaneously and the razor sharp production only highlights this. The guitar tone achieved is really nice and the drums do not sound remotely flat, with the bass being audible if you strain to listen to it.

The songs themselves are of a high standard of quality that one would expect from an album deemed to be one of the best in its genre. The guitar work on the album closer Death Certificate stands out as one of the best things about this album but the whole song is great. Embodiment is the finest song on here, opening with its crushing and yet beautiful riffing and maintaining a huge degree of heaviness and a huge amount of melody. The only song on here that can be considered a bad song is This Mortal Coil, which opens up promisingly with a much faster pace than much of the album but ends up sounding boring with its galloping riffs that just feel a little out of place on this album. Also, the lyricism to this album is not of a very high standard and at times sounds either a little juvenile or just overly repetitive. Despite that, this album still remains one of the best, if not THE best melodic death metal releases of all time, perhaps only topped by The Gallery and Slaughter Of The Soul. If you are looking to get into the melodic death metal genre then this is the album to start with. If you are already a melo-death listener and have not heard Heartwork, you either have no soul or clearly are NOT a melo-death listener. No matter which camp you fall under, or if you are not a part of either and just like metal in general, this album is one I highly recommend.

Enslaved to the Grind - 93%

TheLegacyReviews, November 27th, 2012

Compared to the predecessor which were much more dark and creepy, Heartwork punches you in the face in a much more straight forward style.

When you think melodic death metal, names like Children of Bodom and Arch Enemy will probably pop into your mind. And the idea of death metal blended with clean vocals and keyboards. Wipe out those thoughts, because Heartwork is the album that shows how melodic death metal should be done. With hair on the chest and a firm grip around the balls and of course the snarling vocals of Jeff Walker. Many Carcass fans hates this album and the following album Swansong that got released in '96, and that is a damn shame because this album is the bands best effort next to Necroticism: Descanting the Insalubrious. I have heard this album being called "a blueprint for selling out". It's more like a blueprint and a showcase of how melodic death metal should be played. Packed with aggression from the guitars, and the melodic solos of Amott fits well into the songs and so does Dr. Steers more aggressive solos. Ken Owen steps up yet again and after listening to the album a couple of times and learning the tracks so you know when he hits the crashes, it is just a fucking awesome feeling to smack the air at the same time! Or... your drums, if you're a drummer.

Lyrically the album is not as much about carving up stuff as it used to be. The album still got some really good song writing and a song that really struck me was 'Arbeit Macht Fleisch'. First of all I was wondering why Carcass was doing a song with a German title, but after talking about it with my friend we remembered that the Nazis used the term 'Arbeit Macht Frei', that term is also mentioned in the song. Speculations is that the lyrics of the songs are comparing modern society to a death camp. I don't know what to think myself, which leaves a great mystery about the song, and you can form your very own opinion. Besides 'Arbeit Macht Fleisch' this album is just filled with tracks you can listen to again and again. I would suggest Blind Bleeding the Blind, Embodiment and Doctrinal Expletives. But if you're not too lazy, it would be a better idea to listen to the whole album!

Some may think it is just filling for a review... But I always enjoy a good cover, and I like to talk about it, also when it is bad. I must admit that Carcass is not the band that I would mention first when I think about a band that got a line of awesome covers on the shelf. Heartwork is not really an exception. Even though it is not as horrible as the grindcore covers and Swansong. It still just strikes me as an odd cover to choose. The cover, or at least the sculpture on the cover was created by Hans Rudolf Giger, more commonly known as H. R. Giger. He also created works for bands like Celtic Frost, Danzig, Edge of Sanity and Triptykon.

Heartwork is a truly unique album. Even if you got the opinion that this album led to a sell out for Carcass this album clarified the bands legacy as legends. Pioneering grindcore and melodic death metal, now that is an achievement. With the rumours of a new Carcass record I really hope it will contain some elements from Heartwork. Now that Michael Amott and Daniel Erlandsson is not in the band any more, Carcass could return to their harder roots and mix it up with a bit of Necroticism.

But if you enjoy snarling vocals, and a fast assault with melodic elements you should definitely try out the album, and even if you don't know this band, give it a shot anyway! Maybe you have stayed away from Heartwork because of the negative feelings there is regarding melodic death metal, maybe you should think again and give it a chance...

-Alexander Dinesen
www.legacyreviews.blogspot.com

Feels like an endurance test, lacking in zest - 60%

NausikaDalazBlindaz, October 2nd, 2012

Let's face it, Carcass's original reason for being was a one-trick pony that would wear out its welcome after two or three albums and sooner rather than later the musicians would have had to rethink their direction if the band were to survive another few years. At least nearly 20 years after they downed surgical tools and left the operating theatre, we can look back and say that every studio album the band ever released was different from the one before and how many bands with a legacy of four or five studio albums in a genre that initially looks limited in subject scope and musical style can we say that of ? Carcass managed to wring a surprising amount of variety in their music; perhaps lyrically not so much so but towards the end of their original career together they were working towards a more socially conscious and universal outlook. "Heartwork" represents a transition away from the old gleeful Carcass having fun with over-the-top gory lyrics and suffocating grindcore with the occasional improvisatory lead guitar towards a more mature band that emphasised solid rhythm attack, hard and brutal riffs, melodic guitar work and socially aware lyrics and subject matter.

Generally the album's music is very dense and technically precise with the band presenting a very tight and united front of twin-guitar battery and militant drumming. There is only one vocalist (Jeff Walker) and his gruff death-metal singing is business-like and brusque: this might be disappointing to some Carcass fans who miss the deranged relish he exhibited on earlier albums, not to mention Bill Steer's gruff if rather stoic counterpoint swamp-monster bass vocal. Familiar elements include the lightning switch from one set of riffs and the pace associated with it to another lot of riffs set at a different speed and back again in a split second, and splats of shrill lead guitar solo from Steer. The main difference between "Heartwork" and earlier full-length recordings is that much of the exuberance and cheeky spirit of previous work has gone and "Heartwork" now sounds like terribly earnest hard work. Of course I know there wasn't anything here the musicians couldn't have tackled but it's hard to shake off the feeling that here they were making mountains of near-Alpine stature out of molehills and ploughing tunnels through them to boot.

The standard of playing is excellent and there are no filler tracks but at the same time no one song really stands out for inspiration or catchy tunes or clever rhymes. Even on paper the lyrics look bland and have a sense of tired deja vu. As the album proceeds, the guys dutifully hold up technically but each succeeding song feels like more and more of an endurance test and the old zest is tiring and falling away rapidly. Some early tracks here have a good rhythm groove but later tracks aren't quite so memorable in that sense. After a few repeat hearings, the album sounds like ten variations on a not very interesting musical theme and when the final song is over and done with, all I feel is enormous relief that the album is over and that the Carcass men can finally hang up their guitars. This is not good.

A canvas to paint, to degenerate... - 100%

Xyrth, December 27th, 2010

This, my dear metal brothers and sisters, is ONE OF THE BEST METAL ALBUMS EVER, and really that’s the only thing this review should say. Just kidding... but only in the last part. Cos’ this is undoubtedly a legendary album, a metal masterpiece, plagued by the misconception that is the sold-out album by the band in question, in which they abandoned their hard-hitting death metal sound and gave up their underground status in exchange for mainstream recognition. This line of thought, my metal brothers, couldn’t be more shortsighted.

The bands that reach the heights of metal legends rarely release just an obscure demo and instantly reach cult status. Some of them might earn it with their first proper album (Black Sabbath, Exodus, Suffocation). But, most of them grow, evolve, improve, refine their abilities and sound and eventually release their masterpiece, a record that will become embedded in the hearts and minds of metalheads of all places and ages. We’re talking about those Powerslaves, Painkillers, Crimson Idols, Transylvanian Hungers, Masters of Puppets, Imaginations from the Other Side… you get the picture. Carcass is one of those bands.

Since their inception, the Carcass boys started to evolve and with each album they took a step closer to perfection. Death metal purists may argue that they reached that point with their second or third release. But I strongly disagree. Those albums, though clearly great death metal offerings, are not the best in their genre. When naming the best death metal albums of all time, masterpieces like “Scream Bloody Gore”, “Pierced From Within” or “Realm of Chaos” would certainly be named first. But when asking for la crème de la crème of melodic death metal, or in my opinion, melodic extreme metal of any kind, Carcass’ Heartwork is the expected answer.

What makes this album that perfect is… well, just about everything about it, starting with the timeless, iconic cover, an installation by swiss dark surrealism master H.R. Giger. It perfectly mimics and represents the music of this album; a strikingly elegant masterpiece that conceals an aura of sickness. Actually, Giger’s installation predates the creation of this release, but to suggest a choicest artwork for Heartwork is practically impossible.

The production… damn. This has to be one of better-produced albums ever. It’s sharp, crisp, yet organic and rich. You can almost hear the band member’s thoughts! Well, perhaps not, but I mean, you can perfectly picture all components of Ken Owen’s drumkit in your mind from the sound of this record. The cymbals, in particular, each has its specific timbre, and they sound so powerful and perfect, and I can’t name another album in which I enjoy more the way the plates sound. High quality definition doesn’t even come close. The guitars are beyond perfection as well, and it couldn’t be otherwise since this album is pretty much guitar-oriented. The bass gets a bit buried in the mix, but it’s fairly audible. And Jeff Walker’s vocals sound so sick… “harsh” is an understatement.

As for the performance, well, it’s just utterly mind-blowing. With this album Bill Steer and Michael Amott finished to establish themselves as one of the most complete, dexterous and outstanding pair of axe-men in all of metal’s realms, in league with Tipton and Downing, Smith and Murray, Mustaine and Friedman, and few others. The riffs are catchy, creative, extremely head-bangeable, and they vary from slow and moody, as in the magnificent opener, “Buried Dreams”, to fast as a shark on steroids as shown right at the beginning of the title-track itself. The solos are a delight, a true delicacy, perfectly crafted jewels of the highest quality. Yet they’re dynamically violent as they explode with melodic bursts and raze everything in their path like a volcano’s pyroclasm.

The rhythmic section always provides interesting shifts in tempo, and shines on its own, especially Owen, a master of the skins. His cymbal attack is so colorful and vivid, it hits everything at the perfect time. Ken’s speed and accuracy is machine-like, and here he proves his versatility all the time, appropriately discarding the older blast-everything approach. Damn, I just love to air-drum to this album, it’s amazing. So unfortunately what happened to him a few years after this release.

As for Walker, he does ok hitting the four strings, but is his voice here that becomes the focal point in most songs, competing with the guitars for the top spot. Enhanced by the production, he reaches a sickening rasp growling nirvana that few other melodeath vocalist have been close to emulate. I’ve always thought that this vocal approach is more aggressive, yet less brutal, than the possessed neanderthal ultra-deep grunts of traditional death metal.

So what about the songs? Well, they all equally are fundamental referents of how to do perfect melodeath and for what I’ve red, every reviewer here (among the ones defending the legendary status this cornerstone of an album deserves) have a particular favorite. For me, that would undoubtedly be Heartwork itself, the title-track. Its melodic leads just kills me every-time I listen to it, its elegant lyrics like a mantra to me, both a metalhead and an artist/illustrator. It’s a song I always put during my parties, a song I’ll never grow tired of, a song I’ll always listen to. But they’re all really good. From the hate-inducing opener, to the Maiden-like galloping of “This Mortal Coil”, to the menacing and twisted riffs of the closer “Death Certificate, indeed, each and every track here certifies the excellence of this melodeath non-plus-ultra masterpiece.

This is ESSENTIAL to metalheads that even remotely enjoy melodic extreme metal of any type. GET IT NOW!

Prepare the neck brace. - 100%

Andromeda_Unchained, December 10th, 2010

By far the greatest melodic death metal album to grace this earth we walk on, and arguably one of the finest releases the death metal genre has seen in general. Carcass can never be accused of following suit, as you can tell flicking through their back catalogue. As much as I enjoy Symphonies of Sickness, and Necroticism I found Heartwork to be the strongest of the Carcass catalogue. When reviewing an album as magnificent as this, it really can be difficult to put into words how you feel. I mean come on, this album is pretty much responsible for the spawning of the melodic death metal scene (much to the dismay of some of the old guard.) It's a rarity for a band to hit things this spot on but Carcass fly through, destroying anything in their path. Heartwork is heavy, and I mean really heavy, filthy down-tuned guitars coupled with Jeff Ward's thunderous bass and sickening scream and of course the mind-blowing drum work of Ken Owen.

Strangely enough we start with probably the weakest track on album, however this track only seems weak compared to what else is on offer. To be fair "Buried Dreams" alone slays most of the competition, ripping them limb from limb. "Carnal Forge" is where the shit gets real, featuring the music writing dream team of Bill Steer and Michael Amott. This album is riff-tastic; every song boasts amazing guitar work and some of the riffs outright destroy you. The lead work is, again, a massive high point – the stuff Bill and Michael were doing here is a league of its own, and never again would this magic be heard (Arch Enemy came close enough). The title track stands as my first introduction to Carcass, heard on the all too familiar VH1 rock show back in the day, and it kicks just as much ass as it did back then, from the melodic intro to the punishing-beyond-belief verse riff. Heartwork stands as a timeless album to me, I mean I've listened to this well over a hundred times this year and it's still just as visceral as the first time I heard it. As a musician myself this album stands as one of the most inspiring, it's rare I listen to Heartwork without picking my guitar up straight after, and obviously it's not hard to see how influential this really is. The latter half of the album is where all my personal highlights sit, from "Embodiment" onwards things get very intense. "This Mortal Coil" is my personal favorite, the main riff is beyond heavy, it probably stands as one of the heaviest riffs I've ever heard and when they launch into that Iron Maiden style harmony I get that really geeky "I'm not worthy" feeling. Another personal highlight is "Doctrinal Expletives" launching with a mammoth riff, although where this song really excels is in the guitar work, especially that riff after and during the first solo – how often do you hear stuff like that in death metal?

Heartwork is beyond superlatives really, an album guaranteed in my top 10 of all time. If you haven't heard this you probably don't like metal it's simple as that. This is essential for any metalhead's collection, and I mean any. If ever there was an album to get out and headbang to from start to finish this would be it, I know I've had many a sore neck due to this album. A classic of the genre if there ever was one, if you don't own this buy it – it should be the law. Absolutely essential.

Originally written for www.metalcrypt.com

The low cost of loving - 98%

autothrall, May 9th, 2009

'Symphony of Sickness' and 'Necroticism' provided successive evidence that Carcass were moving away from their pure goregrind roots into a structured and accessible medium of big riffs with catchy hooks. That said, I wasn't quite prepared for 'Heartwork', an album which remains today one of death metal's most memorable offerings and an example of a band's evolution gone proper. Upon first listening to this I had to remove my jaw from the floor and swab up all my wandering saliva. The album flawlessly combines brutality, groove, depth and proficient metal musicianship into a set of highly memorable tracks, and lyrically the band had all but abandoned their pure medical gore diatribe and not quite subtle attempts to steer you into vegetarianism (see what I did there?)

"Buried Dreams" inaugurates the album with creepy leads and a big verse melody which alternates with crunchy, simple thrash. "Carnal Forge" is one of the amazing, faster tracks of the album where the vocals start to take off, Walker's sneers at their all time high. The song has some excellent bridge riffs where catchy rhythms accent potent leadwork, all collapsing back a labyrinth of chunky winding riffs. "No Love Lost" hits straight to the gut with a wall of groove, subtly morphing into the song's verse and emo-crusher chorus:

"The low cost of loving
Amorous travesty
Human frailties and weakness are easy prey
How your poor heart will bleed"

"Heartwork" follows with an excellent, speedy intro riff before an amazing melodic lead and a thrusting, thrashing verse rhythm. "Embodiment" is a slower track with a series of excellent melodies before its slow paced moshing. "This Mortal Coil" quickens the pace once, yet more intense melodies, though the real power here is the Maiden-esque melodic gallup of the bridge. This leads to what I'd consider the best song of Carcass' career, standing out amongst even its excellent peers on this disc. "Arbeit Macht Fleisch" features some of the best riffs I have ever heard in my life. A perfect, grooving verse leads into that amazing thrash part at :52 and then the song proceeds to batter you with its brilliant selection of notes and intensity. GRIND.

Superb lyrics capture the futility of modern, repetetive lives of unhappiness through potent, nihilistic imagery. "Blind Bleeding the Blind" follows, another faster phrase with some groovy breaks and blues solos. "Doctrinal Expletives" has some more bludgeoning breakdowns amidst its steady steamroller fervor, however this is probably the weakest track on the album and partly responsible for the only 1/4 point I could ever dock it (a few of the earlier tracks get dull after time too). "Death Certificate" ends the album on a high note with some vibrant and catchy melodic riffing, though if you've got the bonus track "This is Your Life", it's also quite good and sets up the further death & roll direction the band would be taking with their next and last album, Swansong.

In addition to being a key evolutionary piece in the career of this band, Heartwork stands alongside the later 'Slaughter of the Soul' as one of the albums to hugely influence the style we know today as melodic death metal or 'melodeath'. It seamlessly incorporates heavy metal leadwork and catchier riff structures yet remains totally brutal. The latter aspect is aided by the absolutely crushing mix here, it still sounds better than most albums released today. The leadwork courtesy of Michael Amott is extremely well constructed, and the lyrics are almost uniformly perfect.

'Heartwork' was, and is, a monument to quality. During that early to mid 90s period in which metal was starting to sink, this was one of the exceptions. It deserved all the accolades rained upon it and the wider distribution it had with the Columbia/Earache deal upon its release. Also: H.R. Giger sculpture on your cover makes you cool.

-autothrall
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com

Carcass - Heartwork - 92%

Autumn_Twilight, August 2nd, 2008

Without a doubt, Carcass has influenced and been responsible for much of the melodic death metal scene. With killer riffage, the inspired vocals and lyrics of murder and gore, as well as melody balanced with brutality, there is no way one can deny the influence this band had on the ones that would follow. While they started out as grindcore pioneers along with Napalm Death, the band transmogrified their sound over their existence until they hit upon something that would become the basis for the melodic death metal that would follow. Just as Heartwork was released, In Flames, Dark Tranquility, At the Gates, Edge of Sanity and Hypocrisy were beginning to breakthrough. Slaughter of the Soul and The Jester Race were right around the corner. This album without a doubt culminated everything that Carcass was capable of.


Starting off with 'Buried Dreams', they give us a shot of Jeff Walker’s gravely vocals and the first real doses of metallic song structure and melody on a Carcass album. While the band eventually disbanded because they thought that they had strayed from their original view, I would take this album over any of the grind they released earlier. There is something about a Michael Amott solo that I like a lot more than 'Genital Grinder'. Amott is also one of the keys to this album. You can clearly tell that this band was the precursor to Arch Enemy. So much of the music sounds like early demos for what would become Stigmata and Black Earth. On the title track, for example, we hear an up-tempo riff with dual guitar battling and the, in my opinion, perfect vocals for this kind of music. Walker, Steer and drummer Ken Owen really understood that adding Amott to the band would be a vital asset and help their music advance to the next level. His musical style was vastly different from grind, and it is he who probably improved the music by using conventional song structure on this album.

One of my favorite tracks has to be 'This Mortal Coil' in which we get a nice helping of blast beats and mind-twisting breakneck guitar shredding. Walker again suits his vocals to each turn the music takes. The next track “Arbeit Macht Fleisch” is a shredder from start to finish that clearly has Amott’s name spray painted all over it. Each aspect of this complex melody shows some homology to work he has done later on in his career. The final track also even incorporates a little of the folk influences that seem all too common in metal today. It is good to see this influence but in a subtler role than it is featured today. You almost have to define your sound with folk influence if your band hopes to advance in certain aspects of the scene now. Carcass shows how it can be evenly balanced with a full-on metal attack.


The gore themes have been dialed down a notch from previous Carcass releases. Instead of over the top almost parodical nonsense lyrics, it seems as though the band focused on the real message behind the senseless vulgarity and created something more spine tingling and creepy. Instead of another 'Embryonic Necropsy and Devourment' we get 'No Love Lost'. This refinement in terms truly elevated Carcass above anything they had ever done before. The album artwork by famed Swiss Sci-Fi artist H.R. Giger is also a step above their previous artistic themes.


Outstanding Songs: Buried Dreams, No Love Lost, Heartwork, This Mortal Coil, Death Certificate