Severed Survival

Autopsy is possibly my favorite Swedish death metal band, perhaps in part due to the fact that they’re American. I could never entirely get into the likes of Entombed, Grave, Nihilist and the rest, and I’ve even had my share of difficulty telling them apart. I could never grasp the elitism of fans of that scene, either… those bands were quite “unpretentious,” to put it charitably, and the Norwegian black metal scene of the early 90s was justified in railing against them. If not in threatening to kill them constantly…

Regardless, Autopsy were a big influence on that scene, and on plenty outside of it, and were quite unpretentious themselves. What they have on so many of their protégés is their uniqueness. One might not think that a band could be both widely influential and unique, but it works out that way more often than not. Presumably there’s some advantage in getting into the game before all the idiosyncrasies have been ironed out and all of the stereotypes have been formed. Certainly Autopsy’s weird bass-heavy production has rarely if ever been replicated in death metal, and Chris Reifert’s hoarse screams are still a rare sound (Chuck Schuldiner and John Tardy are in the same ballpark, though).

Autopsy are often called doomy, or very occasionally even branded as death/doom, owing to their reliance on prominent riffs and occasional slow tempos, and it’s their distinctive riffing style that I enjoy the most. They don’t give off a feeling of clean, elegant, Satanic evil: it’s more like pure filth and decay. On later albums the lyrics show coprophagic tendencies, which matches well with the band’s “ideology,” such as it is.

This first album has them playing somewhat more memorable and song-y death metal than what they were doing on Mental Funeral, the other classic Autopsy album. Really you should have both of them.