New Carcass? Ooh, goodie! It’s only four songs, but given that the band “called it a day” back in 1996 I’ll take what I can get. 2013’s comeback Surgical Steel showed that the band never lost their edge, and Despicable continues in the same vein as that release.
Two of the tracks are already available via YouTube (and likely elsewhere) so existing fans will know what to expect. Lovely downtuned guitars; slow, melodic rhythms; rampaging drums; trademark vocals; and those thrashing flurries that open up the dancefloor. It’s impressive that a band as long-standing as Carcass have managed to create two distinctive sounds: their original splatter/grind, and the newer more melodic tone.
It’s very much the latter on display on these four songs, with the pace being predominantly on the slower and more doomy side. “The Long And Winding Bier Road” has a nice chugging rhythm going on, “Slaughtered in Soho” going for the scaling riffs and “Under The Scalpel Blade” probably featuring more of the “olds school” tones than the other songs. It really is a pretty evil sounding number.
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With it being a short release, I’ve given it a few spins while reviewing and I can say I’m definitely impressed. OK, so it’s nothing new as such, but when you’re a genre-defining act there’s nothing wrong with sticking to your classic sound.
Despicable is out on October 30th
