Autopsy

Mental Funeral (1991)

In looking at Mental Funeral's innovation and massive influence on Death Metal (see: Swedish Death Metal especially) it is hard to get confused, or side-tracked, and miss the abundance of wealth in the music itself. It is almost safe to say that no other band has pulled off the dirty, revolting, horror-filled & fleshy sound as well as Autopsy. Like a chainsaw to the guts, this music digs deep, rips previous taboos to shreds and exposes the soft underbelly and death-prone human state to perfection. Songs build speed with the fast-strumming of power chords and tremolo sections, but generally break down, as if decomposing, into dirge-like passages. Previous sections often return and act as over-lay, culminating in sharp bursts of lead guitar, as if someone was swinging the axe and blood was spattering all over the walls. The lack of rhythmic climax, is clearly a theme of 'anti-progress' of death ending life in a sudden and horrific fashion. This can also be seen through the musical use of past influences or beacons in the Metal crusade, evidently from Black Sabbath, the 80s solo showmanship and punk and grindcore riffing and beats. However, none of this retains any of its former purity, as if it was hacked up, thrown in a sewer and left to rot... later returning as a beast composed of mountains of dead flesh.

Severed Survival (1989)

Autopsy is perhaps better known for their influence on the emerging Swedish Death Metal scene (bass-heavy riffing, a bludgeoning riff attack that often descends into slow, Doom-like trudges) than their own American scene. Severed Survival is an album often referred to as gore metal, and one listen confirms this. It sounds putrid, diseased and blood soaked... from the crude and simple, blunt knife approach to song-writing to the primitive brute force of the production job. It's perfect for a list such as this as it defies any morality and crosses taboo into the land of impending social decay... and well gore (a pet hate of "sane" individuals). Autopsy take a lifeless, and well particularly tasteless subject, and inject it with willful abandon and make it beautiful in its new light. This album represents a certain freedom from the constraints of death, and a rejection of the fear (morality, taboo) that comes with it. Only Death is Real.