Review AUTOPSY ‘Ashes, Organs, Blood and Crypts

Death metal was still in its early days when a band was formed in Oakland, California in 1987, which rightfully belongs to the trailblazers of an entire genre. We are talking about Autopsy.

A year after the release of ‘Morbidity Triumphant’, ‘Ashes, Organs, Blood and Crypts’ hits the record stores, an album with eleven new songs that blow you away.

The beginning is made by the fast and relentless ‘Rapid Funeral’ which also pushes with massive impact into the auditory canals of listeners. At the same time the experience from the last decades helps to shape a diversified repertoire. With five minutes playing time the opener is one of the longest tracks on the album, which is partly due to a calmer closing section, which gives the tune an extra dose of intensity.

More impetuous is ‘Throatsaw’. The Californian splatter kings pound their way through two and a half minutes of pure death metal.

After such a whirlwind ‘No Mortal Left live’ comes almost epic around the corner. Autopsy start this song with a doomy slowness and even if the track never becomes a raging inferno, the band manages to fit a lot of variation into this track.

‘Well of Entrails’ takes up the concept of the opener and features riffs that are even slower than those on the previous ‘No Mortals Left Alive’. ‘Well of Entrails’ is a death metal battering ram whose power impresses; but one doesn’t want to stand in the way of it either. That the song picks up speed in the second half and that the howling guitars come to the fore is not surprising, since it is exactly those breaks that make up the thrill.

Furthermore, we have the raging title track and it is songs like ‘Toxic Death Fuk’ which combine speed with groove. The band switches up a notch with ‘Death is the Answer’ while the slo-mo sounds are called into action again with the closer ‘Coagulation’. In the latter song the growls are even deeper than usual which provides the album with a very diabolic ending.

Autopsy always manage to create death metal that is interesting and entertaining. Nothing is left to chance and yet the album sounds dynamic and spontaneous. With skillful songwriting, the guys create bloodthirsty death metal tunes that always shine with diversity and variety.