CD Review: AUTOPSY ~ Macabre Eternal
June 11, 2011 by Rustyn Rose
Filed under Autopsy, CD Reviews, Reviews
Autopsy ~ Macabre Eternal (Peaceville)
Release date: May 31, 2011
Listen up kiddies, as I tell you a little deadtime story…
It’s 3 a.m., too tired too sleep. Seems like a brilliant time to load up the new Autopsy and see if the guys are as sick as ever. Sixteen short long years since their last full length studio effort, Shitfun (1995). Seems like a deathtime ago.
My hopes are high, my pessimism higher, having barely survived Morbid pitfalls earlier in the week. With much trepidation and a decent amount of liquid courage (okay it’s diet soda, but who wants to hear that?) I press play.
I am happy to report that the rumors of Chris Reifert’s untimely demise are completely true. His vocals remain, as ever, like the guttural disembodied rasps of 1000 rotting cadavers. His drumsticks most certainly the bones of those same corpses, his snare covered in the flesh of the damned. Welcome home old friend, how we’ve missed you.
Autopsy is back to draw their doomy tendrils of despair across our flesh and disembowel in slow agonizing measure. Macabre Eternal is death metal of the old school. Reifert and Co. are not interested in fret pyrotechnics and shredding speedfests. Guitarists Danny Coralles and Eric Cutler know when to step on the gas and when to use their axes to slowly dismember you. After all, what’s the fun in a quick death?
Macabre Eternal is a tenebrous and ghoulish necrofest. From the opening death march of “Hand of Darkness” Autopsy have you in their infernal grip. The album’s second track, “Dirty Gore Whore,” is a greasy little romp, that at times feels a touch over the top, and has some Iron Maiden-esque guitar trolling. Perhaps the album’s weakest track, it’s still a sickly intoxicating little ditty.
The band has already given fans a chance to hear “Always About To Die”, which you can listen to below:
The title track kicks off in brutal fashion with a soulless howl and a vicious rhythmic cacophony. The guitar solo alone sounds like the wails of endless tormented souls.
From the psychosis inducing discordance of “Deliver Me From Sanity” to the bowels of hell soundtrack, “Bridge Of Bones”, to the necrotically neurotic sonic embolism of “Bludgeoned And Brained”, Autopsy take us through the ghoulish playbook of classic death metal components.
Other than better production quality than in years past, there is nothing overtly new to be found here. In fact, it’s that absence of ”new” that makes us so fond of Autopsy. Macabre Eternal says it all in the title. These guys are the masters of macabre death metal, and they’ve returned from the grave to remind us of that, one reaping at a time.
Macabre Eternal is a disturbingly inviting nightmare from which we have no desire to wake. So get your flesh addled bones on this one, and crank it till you raise the dead.
Rating: 9.2/10
Notable: ”Bridge Of Bones”, “Born Undead” “Macabre Eternal”
Autopsy 2011: Chris Reifert, Danny Coralles, Eric Cutler, Joe Trevisano
got dead?
