AUTOPSY

AUTOPSY “Morbidity Triumphant”

By Dr. Abner Mality

The latest AUTOPSY album puts my brain in conflict with my guts, because they both react differently to this putrid pile of plastic. My brain tells me that if you’ve heard one AUTOPSY album, you’ve pretty much heard them all. Their last four albums in particular seem to be virtually the same release and most of the songs have become interchangeable to the max. Nobody should expect blinding originality and lots of experimentation from a band such as this, but when songs and albums become virtually identical, then, yes, there is a complaint to be made.

Yet my guts and heart are content to wallow in the doom-soaked filth that this band creates with pleasing regularity. AUTOPSY are...and remain...one of the true touchstones of truly morbid death metal. The title is well applied here. The production is warm and fat and the bass tones are especially obese...just listen to the opening seconds of “Skin By Skin”. Crawling doom is a big part of the band and at some points, there’s almost a stoner rock kind of groove to the riffing like on “The Voracious One” and “Flesh Strewn Temple”. Predictably, the songs all blaze with a screaming fast tempo at some point and you can bet your paycheck that Eric Cutler and Danny Coralles will cut loose with a raging solo during the tune. And of course, of all the AUTOPSY characteristics, none is more dependable than Chris Reifert’s demented vocal snarls and groans.

It can be enjoyed on the most primal level, which is what AUTOPSY is always aiming for, but wow, the incredible familiarity and predictability of the material is overwhelming. The last album “Hacksaws, Tourniquets and Graves” came out 8 years ago,, but “Morbidity Triumphant” sounds like it was recorded during the very same sessions. “Satisfying but static” are the terms I apply here.

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AUTOPSY