Let me paint a picture for you. You, your hombres, friends – or to use the parlance of our times – “crew” are reposing at a festival, gig or public gathering of your choice. The conversation starts to drift to music. At one point, the question, “what’s your favourite album of all time?” is likely to be asked. Now, at this point, there are three likely answers:
a) I really couldn’t narrow it down to one.
b) It really depends on your question – do you mean of one genre? Do you mean of one kind of emotion?
It is album X by artist Y.
Now, many people struggle to give answer c). I don’t. My answer, as it has been since I first got hold of it, is confidently “Necroticism – descanting the insalubrious by Carcass”. Imagine, therefore, how arched my eyebrows were when the PR sheet for Consumption’s latest album claims that this platter is, “the album that Carcass never made after Necrotisicm…”.
The brainchild of multi-instrumentalist Hakan Stuvemark (Wombbath, amongst others), Consumption aim to play old-Carcass inspired death metal, placed somewhere between the power-duo of Symphonies of Sickness and Necroticism. It’s not as if there is a lack of bands playing Goregrind inspired by the gory-four, but to be fair the Swedes are really aiming for that death metal vibe prior to the melodic assault spearheaded by Heartwork. It’s quite a narrow niche, but what a band should be aiming for to get this right is an ear for depraved hooks, melancholic soloing, a sickening groove and memorable mid-tempo passages leading to some blast beats.
Does “Necrotic Lust” manage this? Well, opener “Suffering Divine” was a decent enough stab at death metal, but it’s really with the addictive “The Last Supper” that things get going properly. With an addictive groove, and more hooks than a Velcro lorry crashing into a fisherman’s wholesalers, it’s undoubtedly the “Corporeal Jigsore Quandary” of the album. The title track of the album complete with Vincent Price sampled intro vocals, is a cruise-control speed main riff chugarama that gives way to grinding blasts, in a very “Pedigree Butchery” type of way. “A Secret Coliseum” really doubles down on those writhing, rotting riffs, rolling and twisting over each other like earthworms in the grave. “Ground into Ash and Coal” features none other than the gore-father himself, Jeff Walker, supplying his own inimitable rasp to the pummelling artillery strikes supplied by a surgical rhythm section.
“Offspring Inhuman Conceived” is the most sinister song on the album, a monolithic beast which has pots of menace, introduced by the kind of brooding introduction that is as much part early Bolt Thrower as it is Carcass. At over six minutes long, it’s an epic, and gives way to “Twisted Shape Reality”, a straight for the jugular rabid dog of a song, which thrashes its way out of the speakers with slathering abandon. “Circle of Pain” is another wholesale death-fest, with some really nifty rhythm guitar flourishes buried a little in the mix but really effective once picked out. Every album should have a great closer, and this is no exception. “Devices for the Sentenced” is this collection’s “…The Sanguine Article”, perhaps having most of the nods towards melodic death metal, but still properly grounded in real, atmospheric death metal.
So, is this the album Carcass should have recorded after Necroticism? No, probably not – but it really is one which wears it’s influences proudly on its sleeve – and give that Necroticism is my favourite album – of any band – of all time – it’s a scandal that no one before Consumption has really latched onto this. It’s not just some pastiche though, as most Goregrind bands are for earlier Carcass- this is inspired by, but not slavishly, and has plenty of (excellent) songwriting ideas and flourishes of its own. On its own merits, the best pure death metal album I have heard all year. Bravo.
(9/10 Chris Davison)
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