AUTOPSY - The Headless Ritual

August 8, 2013, 11 years ago

(Peaceville)

Greg Pratt

Rating: 9.0

review autopsy

AUTOPSY - The Headless Ritual

Really, AUTOPSY are one of the great gaggles of weirdos of death metal, everything from the truly chilling production/resulting atmosphere of their third album (thanks for traumatizing me in '92, guys), to the also-traumatizing cover art of their fourth album (you know the one... if you don't, you might want to keep it that way); from their sewer-grade appreciation of sludge, doom, and punk to their pedigree and hiatus-filled existence, making the sprawling bar graph/spreadsheet of death metal that clogs up my brain and makes me forget things like the date I got married on that much more haywire, difficult to navigate and filled with potty humour. Yessir, these California cretins are a unique entity for sure, and one that came back in a big way with 2011's Macabre Eternal (featuring some of the best death metal cover art of all time, seriously), and now, with this latest platter of splatter, solidifying the liquid waste that was a "comeback" (liquid waste = a good thing; work with me here, these extended metaphors ain't easy) to prove that this pile of shit... ugh, yeah, can't make that work anymore. Anyway, this rules: opening cut 'Slaughter At Beast House' going so far gone into doom and sludge that it comes out the other end, almost sounding Sabbatherian for a brief moment of clarity. 'Mangled Far Below' follows up the killer opening track with a shorter punk blast that flirts with some southern metal riffing, filtered through the sewage pipes, as always. 'Coffin Crawlers' is chaotic, fast, and raw death metal; 'When Hammer Meets Bone' and 'Flesh Turns To Dust' is classic Autopsy terror, a truly creepy death metal vibe permeating the proceedings like only these DM legends can conjure up. The closing instrumental title track ends it all off with a monumental and dramatic closing, a great way to end it all off. And, when it's all over, a classic song title emerges from the clatter: 'Running From The Goathead'.


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