Hot Take 'em All: Carcass's 'Torn Arteries'
Does it make your heart work or should it be another swan song? Wolf Rambatz and Steve Dave have some takes
In this edition of HTEA, Wolf Rambatz and Steve Dave tackle Torn Arteries, Carcass’s seventh full-length released on September 17 via Nuclear Blast. Listen to the album here.
Artwork by Zbigniew Bielak
What is your hastily written capsule review for Torn Arteries?
Steve Dave: Carcass seem so worried about not repeating Surgical Steel or any of its past records that it has made an album that sounds schizophrenic only for the sake of being that way. Every tune has several moments of excellence, but when taken as a whole the songs all come off as less than the sum of their parts. It makes for an album that’s more fun to poke and prod than actually listen to.
Wolf Rambatz: Torn Arteries’ individual elements are impressive, from Bill Steer’s guitaring to Daniel Wilding’s drumming to David Castillo’s mixing, but they rarely coalesce into something great. The problem? Riffs, specifically a paucity of bangers. Simply put, these 10 songs’ reliance on a comparatively midpaced death ‘n’ roll groove would be more tolerable with better riffs. While the riffs present sound masterly on the surface due to Steer’s undiminished abilities, you quickly notice that there’s not a whole lot sealed within the flashy wrappers. They’re like demo sketches of riffs to be workshopped and fleshed out later, a trait that extends to the solos that come off like a G3 guitar tech warming up. Nothing is outwardly bad, but the riffs lack the “whoa” factor of Heartwork or Surgical Steel and headbangability of Necroticism or Symphonies of Sickness. And that’s the Torn Arteries story, really. This is safe Carcass, a checkdown Carcass playing with an insurmountable lead. There’s no verve, no pathogrind equivalent of joie de vivre, just Carcass going through the Carcassian motions. Or, if Steve Dave is right, Carcass is trying so hard to not go through the Carcassian motions that it game theory’d itself into meh purgatory, forging its distinguishing virtues to deliver on a campaign promise that no one cared about in the first place. The fact that I can’t tell is, obviously, not great! So, like the last Nile album, Vile Nilotic Rites, Torn Arteries is perfectly cromulent if you’ve never heard the band before but exasperating if you’re familiar with the heights it can reach. Carcass sure ain’t reaching for them here.
What is Torn Arteries' best moment?
SD: The verses in “The Scythe’s Remorseless Swings” stomp and groove with the kind of menace and swagger that the best mid-tempo Carcass tunes have to offer.
WR: A couple of my favorite things about Torn Arteries actually have nothing to do with Carcass’s core trio. First, Zbigniew Bielak’s cover art is clever and colorful, two aspects that more metal artwork should aspire to replicate. Second, David Castillo’s mixing and Jens Bogren’s mastering sound awesome, giving Torn Arteries a clear, dynamic depth.
As for the songs, the lead-up singles, “Under the Scalpel Blade” and “Kelly’s Meat Emporium,” are nice nods to the Carcass of yore — Bill vox! — while playing within the band’s newer melodeath ‘n’ roll sandbox. “Kelly’s Meat Emporium,” in particular, has a quick blasting section where Steer, bassist/vocalist Jeff Walker, and Wilding lock in. It’s way too brief, but it does prove that Carcass could still do that if it wanted to.
Elsewhere, Torn Arteries starts and ends with its most promising material. The title track opener contains some decent choppa-choppa that highlights Steer’s nimbleness on the fretboard, nifty for any age, doubly so for 51. Then, two of the final three songs are when Carcass comes alive. The charmingly Beatlesque by way of Coroner “In God We Trust,” and I mean this in the best way, could be a slower Surgical Steel outtake with Steer finally dipping into his bag of stinging leads and Walker sneering his sneeringest sneer. Finally, if there’s a track to salvage, it’s “The Scythe’s Remorseless Swing,” as close as Carcass Mk Torn Arteries comes to classic status, presenting a fun what-if scenario of what Swansong could’ve been if Steer was more willing at the time to layer his guitars.
And that’s either the best or most frustrating thing about Torn Arteries: Everyone sounds like they can still play their asses off. Wilding, the young buck, duplicates and perhaps betters his Surgical Steel performance, building up and breaking down deft rhythms. Walker’s bass playing is right there with him. Additionally, Walker’s voice sounds surprisingly well-preserved considering we’re five years away from Carcass’s 40th anniversary. All of that should be celebrated…preferably on tour…with a setlist of better songs.
What is the worst?
SD: “Eleanor Rigor Mortis” comes off as a goof. The pizza thrash bookends and the plodding and dragging remainder of the tune reek of a practice room joke rather than a real song. It’s a boring tune when it’s consistent, and it adds more evidence to the “different for the sake of being different” feel that the whole album seems to give off.
WR: Torn Arteries, like Swansong, is a legendary band attempting to harness its godly powers in a slightly different way and tying itself down in the process. This album is ground bound. There’s no liftoff, no moment when Carcass engages its thrusters for anything longer than a few tantalizing seconds. Whither the killer leads? Whither the smarts?
Most of the time, it’s as if Carcass is barely breaking a sweat, from the verve-less grooves to the lazy, Carcass-impersonating-Carcass song titles. It’s like watching an NBA player dicking around in a pickup run: undeniably admirable in that the athleticism is plainly obvious, but you can tell they’re taking it easy and reaching deep into their bag for half-baked moves they wouldn’t dare attempt in a game. I hate to say it, but Carcass has been bodied by the new General Surgery EP, Lay Down and Be Counted. While General Surgery lacks the polish and potential of its main inspiration, it sure as shit outhustles the similarly aged granddads of goregrind. It also doesn’t hurt that Urban Skytt and Joacim Carlsson’s grooving riffs have grit and bite, the hallmarks of riffsmiths still hungry to impress.
One of the other problems with Torn Arteries is the length. “Kelly’s Meat Emporium” aside, most of these songs are either overlong or, more damningly, feel overlong. Regarding the latter, I’m not sure I believe that Torn Arteries clocks in at only 49 minutes, a perception-skewing byproduct of the average track’s frequent wardrobe changes that cycle through barely distinct getups. That how-about-this!itis leads to a maddening incoherence that murders the flow dead. The middle of this album, featuring the nearly 10-minute “Flesh Ripping Sonic Torment Limited,” is especially rough, recalling those late ‘90s thrash albums when every band indulged in the sprawl that the CD format encouraged, cramming in B-sides aplenty. That stretch gets rougher when you remember that last year’s leftovers EP, Despicable, was sold as cutting-room-floor material not good enough to make the next Carcass album. Could’ve tacked a few more tracks onto that one, I think, the severely disjointed “Eleanor Rigor Mortis” foremost among them.
Lastly, if the intention was truly to break free from the typecasting brought on by the success of Surgical Steel, where the expectation is that every subsequent album needs to be an iterative sequel, than I wish the Carcass went all the way. Satan continues to be the gold standard for heavy metal comebacks, delivering albums that are different in confidently engaging ways that don’t obscure the band’s essence. What’s “different” about Torn Arteries sounds overly cautious, dipping a toe into lesser interpretations of other times Carcass has tried to be different while bullheadedly suppressing Carcass’s better qualities. It’s so irritating! Carcass has done “different” before, famously making the jump from a great goregrind band to a great melodeath band. But on Torn Arteries, Carcass has lost its instincts, flicking specs of gold back into the river while washing the mud off butt rock pyrite. There are hints at melody aching to be expanded that would’ve made this so much more interesting, even if it turned Torn Arteries into a reckless disaster. Instead, as a friend said, “It’s like the pitch was ‘Okay, you guys like Heartwork, right? Great! Imagine a less-good version of Heartwork. Now, imagine a less-good version of THAT album.” Still, mission accomplished, I guess. Torn Arteries is different than Surgical Steel: it’s boring as hell.
Where does Torn Arteries rank in the Carcass discography?
SD: There’s far more interesting and catchy bits in Torn Arteries than there are in Swansong, and the album is certainly much more listenable than Reek of Putrefaction. But it falls mightily under Carcass’s big three records of the late ‘80s/early ‘90s and lacks Surgical Steel’s huge hooks and general focus.
WR: Torn Arteries bests Swansong, an album I admittedly don’t care to spin again to fact-check if that ranking is accurate. That said, I have zero interest in revisiting Torn Arteries either. Life is short. Give me the first four plus Surgical Steel and let’s call it a day.
Final thoughts?
SD: If Carcass really wants to play NWOBHM/early thrash by way of death metal’s aggression, it should just do it. “Unfit for Human Consumption” from Surgical Steel and “The Scythe’s Remorseless Swing” have proven that the members are now far greater masters of this style than they were during Swansong. But right now Torn Arteries is just too self-conscious for its own good.
WR: Like Senjutsu, Torn Arteries suggests that there’s a schism between critics and regular listeners. On Album of the Year, Torn Arteries has a critic score of 87 and a user score of 75. For the moment, the critic score ranks Torn Arteries as the seventh-best album of the year. Seventh-best! On RateYourMusic, however, the raters have sided with AOTY’s users. Torn Arteries’ 3.33 positions it above Swansong and Reek of Putrefaction, but far below Surgical Steel’s 3.54, itself a step down from Necroticism’s 3.85 and Heartwork’s 3.80. (I’d like to state for the record that Reek is good to great and RYM users are weaklings when it comes to real grind.) RYM ranks Torn Arteries as the 531st-best album of the year.
Is Torn Arteries the seventh-best or 531st-best album of the year? With that kind of variance in the aggregated appraisal, you’d think this album would risky as heck, taking huge swings that either resulted in towering dingers or flailing misses. And…it’s not. Torn Arteries is a replacement-level Carcass album. Sure, it has a high floor because few other bands are able to pull off a melodeath-y sound in 2021 with any degree of expertise. But, is it experimental? No. Is it bold? No. Is it the best? NO. It’s like we’re all going to battle over whether Barry Bonds’s 2006 season should get him into the Hall of Fame.
That Steve Dave and I agree that Torn Arteries is meh appears to be a rarity among the professional metal opinion-havers class. One of my best buds thinks Torn Arteries is good. We have argued about this at length. Torn Arteries doesn’t deserve the amount of energy that either of us has expended in trying to prove we’re right. The worst thing I can say about Torn Arteries is that it’s fine, fucking boring, but fine. Why am I fighting over fine?
There’s a thing that Sam Miller once said on the Effectively Wild podcast that I can’t stop thinking about. I’m paraphrasing, but Miller’s general point was that we’re desperate for new works in our lifetime to be great. In turn, we kill ourselves to keep up with the deluge of new releases and brawl fiercely to justify our opinions. But, in reality, we’re furiously debating the merits of material that future generations will inevitably consider C-pluses as soon as the novelty wears off. Torn Arteries isn’t better than Necroticism or Heartwork. It’s also not a difficult listen, meaning it’s probably not going to become a grower. Within Carcass’s catalog, it’s a C-plus. If you think it’s an A-plus, whatever. I’m not going to fight you. It’s not worth the effort because, ultimately, Torn Arteries neither burnishes Carcass’s legacy nor tarnishes it. It’s a safe attempt by a band that has proven it can coast to a fine album even when denying itself access to the best tools of its trade. Carcass is Carcass and will continue being Carcass. Now, that new Fawn Limbs album? That’s something to fight about.
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