Severed Survival

When Chris Reifert left Death, after playing on their debut Scream Bloody Gore, he wanted to continue to make music and so he needed to create a vehicle to do this. The result was Autopsy, a band who took what Death had done on their debut to the next step, incorporating increasing amounts of doom and hardcore punk into the equations on later albums. Their first album though, Severed Survival is a filth ridden classic of Death Metal.

After leaving Death, Reifert was keen to recruit new members for his own group. With Reifert handling drums and vocals he decided to recruit both Eric Cutler and Danny Coralles to play guitar. After trying out several bassists Reifert decided to hire Steve DiGiorgio to play session bass on the debut. DiGiorgio played bass and the thrash band Sadus and had also played in Death at the same time as Reifert. With Cutler, Coralles and DiGiorgio on board Autopsy were ready to record their debut album Severed Survival.

Reifert and Cutler wrote most of the music on the album combining killer riffs, high speed drumming, slower doomier passages and sick lead guitar. The guitarists manage to pull of everything with ease including some excellent solos. These solos are some of my favourite parts on the album; no heartless guitar acrobatics here, just some sick, well played leads that help to accent the songs. Nothing on the album is overly complex but this isn’t a problem as Autopsy have written some truly memorable riffs. All the songs have a great atmosphere; they’re played with an almost punkish attitude (something Reifert would explore later on in his post-Autopsy project: Abscess). The drums again are fairly simple, though not in a bad way, although Reifert can reach some high speeds. My favourite sections of the drumming though are the parts on the slower parts. These slower parts help to create the great atmosphere present through the whole album and it was these doomier sections that Autopsy would expand on in their second album Mental Funeral. It’s a rare occasion that I can pick out bass in music, I’m awful at t hat sort of thing, put on this album the bass is quite high in the mix, and it’s great. Steve DiGiorgio lives up to his reputation, giving us a great bass line and some odd little technical thingies (not sure what to call them, just listen to Disembowel).

Chris Reifert wrote all the lyrics for the album and, as well as handling drums, also manages to spit them all out. I’m not sure two the man manages it (I can’t multi-task) but I can only imagine it must take a lot of practice. His vocals are quite hard to describe, they’re high pitched – but not screams, they’re guttural – but not growls. Anyway, whatever the styles called, the vocals work really well with the instruments. The lyrics are pretty standard gore/death/torture ones and because of the vocal style you can actually understand what the guys on about.

I don’t really have anything bad to say at all about this album. Its mix of filthy riffs, disturbing vocals and technical leads seems to have all bases covered.

My favourite track on this album is Disembowel. To me the sound seems to be ever so slightly different and they just got it spot on in this song. It has got all the things that make me love this album including some great bass parts.

The album was recorded at Starlight Sound and produced by John Marshall. I’m not familiar at all with either the studios or the producer but I have no criticisms of the atmosphere or the quality. I actually really love the filthy, punk atmosphere on this album; it’s actually similar to Pungent Stench (who I also like).

Overall this is a great album. It has everything that makes Death Metal so enjoyable, and more!. If you can, pick up the 2009 version of this release, it has some new Autopsy tracks and older versions of the songs and is probably worth getting.