This is classic, goregrind Carcass. Sure, Heartwork is good too, but this is a pretty sick album.

There's one huge problem I have with this album...the production. Its absolutely abysmal! Even the band themselves said the production ruined the album. It makes the production of St. Anger look like a proffessional job. lol Its virtually impossible to hear any actual riffs (especially during the blast beat sections), and so its very hard to judge any of the songs fairly. Though ''Pungent Excruciation'' does stand out as a merciless, pounding track. It even features a semi-melodic solo, so even back then, the promise that they would fully show on their next 2 albums, was there. If there was ever an album in terrible need of remixing/remastering, then its this one!

Written by vezzy on 31.05.2010 at 20:18

This is classic, goregrind Carcass. Sure, Heartwork is good too, but this is a pretty sick album.

Absolutely!

Every so often in Metal there comes something ground breaking. It may be a band, an album, or a song. This album is one of those times. In this case you have to listen with your mind not just your ears. The average person who listens to Pop music will go through their whole life only listening with their ears like a child who only eats sweets. That approach doesn't work with pioneering metal like this.

Yes, Mike Ivory probably should have been shot. But, Paul Talbot did good salvage job on an album that set many a Goregrind ship sailing in following decade. I put this album in the same category as pioneering albums like Venom's - Welcome to Hell and Possessed's - Seven Churches.

Why display de censored cover?

Written by Numbskull on 31.05.2010 at 22:11

Written by vezzy on 31.05.2010 at 20:18

This is classic, goregrind Carcass. Sure, Heartwork is good too, but this is a pretty sick album.

Absolutely!

Every so often in Metal there comes something ground breaking. It may be a band, an album, or a song. This album is one of those times. In this case you have to listen with your mind not just your ears. The average person who listens to Pop music will go through their whole life only listening with their ears like a child who only eats sweets. That approach doesn't work with pioneering metal like this.

Yes, Mike Ivory probably should have been shot. But, Paul Talbot did good salvage job on an album that set many a Goregrind ship sailing in following decade. I put this album in the same category as pioneering albums like Venom's - Welcome to Hell and Possessed's - Seven Churches.

lol if your analogy is correct listening to reek is pretty much eating something extremely DEAD. BTW great album in need of a remixing

The production bothers me... and I'm a black metal fan

Sickening and not in a good way, creating a new style is not an excuse for sounding like shit.

Pure goregrind. Nothing more, nothing less.

Written by Guest on 17.11.2012 at 02:37

Sickening and not in a good way, creating a new style is not an excuse for sounding like shit.

To be fair to the band, it's not their fault the sound on the album is so awful. Even the band members themselves think the album sounds atrocious! It would be nice to hear this album with a similar production quality to "Symphonies Of Sickness". Then I'd be able to judge the individual songs more fairly. The production on this one is definitely one of the worst I've ever heard. I've heard demos recorded on cassettes that have superior sound quality!

Written by Angelic Storm on 02.04.2013 at 01:44

Written by Guest on 17.11.2012 at 02:37

Sickening and not in a good way, creating a new style is not an excuse for sounding like shit.

To be fair to the band, it's not their fault the sound on the album is so awful. Even the band members themselves think the album sounds atrocious! It would be nice to hear this album with a similar production quality to "Symphonies Of Sickness". Then I'd be able to judge the individual songs more fairly. The production on this one is definitely one of the worst I've ever heard. I've heard demos recorded on cassettes that have superior sound quality!

This album sounds like shit. You can't even hear the riffs. And this comment comes from a Black Metal fan. I mean, I usually enjoy albums that most people would complain about the production ("In Battle There is No Law", early Bathory, early Kreator, Nocternity, "Show No Mercy", "Lugburz", "Nattens Madrigal", etc - I could name many others) but this is too much even for me in terms of production. I have some Black Metal demos in my collection that sound borderline shitty and I'm sure tons of people would dismiss outright as crap and they still sound not as bad as this album.

Written by Lord_Regnier on 02.04.2013 at 03:33
This album sounds like shit. You can't even hear the riffs. And this comment comes from a Black Metal fan. I mean, I usually enjoy albums that most people would complain about the production ("In Battle There is No Law", early Bathory, early Kreator, Nocternity, "Show No Mercy", "Lugburz", "Nattens Madrigal", etc - I could name many others) but this is too much even for me in terms of production. I have some Black Metal demos in my collection that sound borderline shitty and I'm sure tons of people would dismiss outright as crap and they still sound not as bad as this album.

Yep well, I actually love the sound on albums like "In Battle There Is No Law", "Endless Pain", and "Show No Mercy"... lol I don't see why anyone would have an issue with the sound on those albums. There's a warmth and a charm to albums with a harsher, rawer production, that albums with more clean, polished production lacks. However, with those albums I mentioned and other albums with a similar, lo-fi production, the riffs can still be heard clearly. There is a great deal of difference between raw production, and production which is simply rubbish. And the production on "Reek Of Putrefaction" falls squarely into the latter category. Many of the riffs are indescipherable, and this is highlighted all the more during the album's many blast beat sections, where the sound just descends into a complete mess.

The only reason I didn't rate the album lower, is because on the small amount of occasions when I'm actually able to hear a riff, they are very good. And also because this is one of the pioneering grind albums (although I think Symphonies... was more influential). But an album with sound as awful as this just can't be given a high rating. Production needs to be really awful before I will severely hold it against an album, and the production on this album unfortunately fits the credentials for being truly awful.

Sure the production is shit but you have to remember these guys didnt have any money at the time, so it had to be done quickly and cheaply. And trying to find someone who knew how to produce the music was almost impossible because it was so new. For me it just adds to to atmosphere of the album. It's got soul, which you rarely get on albums these days cause of soul killers like pro tools and digital recording tools.

Written by Angelic Storm on 02.04.2013 at 12:59

Yep well, I actually love the sound on albums like "In Battle There Is No Law", "Endless Pain", and "Show No Mercy"... lol I don't see why anyone would have an issue with the sound on those albums. There's a warmth and a charm to albums with a harsher, rawer production, that albums with more clean, polished production lacks. However, with those albums I mentioned and other albums with a similar, lo-fi production, the riffs can still be heard clearly. There is a great deal of difference between raw production, and production which is simply rubbish. And the production on "Reek Of Putrefaction" falls squarely into the latter category. Many of the riffs are indescipherable, and this is highlighted all the more during the album's many blast beat sections, where the sound just descends into a complete mess.

The only reason I didn't rate the album lower, is because on the small amount of occasions when I'm actually able to hear a riff, they are very good. And also because this is one of the pioneering grind albums (although I think Symphonies... was more influential). But an album with sound as awful as this just can't be given a high rating. Production needs to be really awful before I will severely hold it against an album, and the production on this album unfortunately fits the credentials for being truly awful.

I don't see any reason to complain about production on "In Battle There Is No Law", "Endless Pain" and "Show No Mercy", indeed. For me, it's perfectly fine as it is. But I heard many complaints about the sound on those albums in the past. The sound just adds to the harshness and atmosphere, Imo.


Sure, there is a huge difference between raw production and shitty production. Just take "Death Magnetic" and "World Painted Blood" as examples. None of them are raw but both have rubbish production. And both bands released much rawer material in their early days, yet the old albums sound much better than their recent ones. Unlike some people believe raw doesn't equal shitty.

Yes, production has to be really crappy for me to complain. Usually, I complain much more about being "too polished" and "overproduced" than being poorly produced.
The only genre in which I like it a bit more polished (and it's really only a little bit here) is Death Metal, even if my tastes in DM are old school. I think when DM is too raw, it tends to sound too much as a chaotic mess. But for me to complain about production being too raw on a DM album, it has to sound really bad. I mean, I love a raw Black Metal production but I think it doesn't serve a DM album very well, if it's nearly as raw as Black Metal. The more chaotic nature of DM makes it hard to hear things well enough when production is really raw, especially if the drummer uses lots of blast beats (which is very often the case in DM). For example, I could not imagine how Nile or Origin would sound with a production kinda like Darkthrone or Taake. I think it would be unlistenable.
Yet I prefer by far the old school DM sound to the plastic shit we often hear nowadays.

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I don't see any reason to complain about production on "In Battle There Is No Law", "Endless Pain" and "Show No Mercy", indeed. For me, it's perfectly fine as it is. But I heard many complaints about the sound on those albums in the past. The sound just adds to the harshness and atmosphere, Imo.


Sure, there is a huge difference between raw production and shitty production. Just take "Death Magnetic" and "World Painted Blood" as examples. None of them are raw but both have rubbish production. And both bands released much rawer material in their early days, yet the old albums sound much better than their recent ones. Unlike some people believe raw doesn't equal shitty.

Yes, production has to be really crappy for me to complain. Usually, I complain much more about being "too polished" and "overproduced" than being poorly produced.
The only genre in which I like it a bit more polished (and it's really only a little bit here) is Death Metal, even if my tastes in DM are old school. I think when DM is too raw, it tends to sound too much as a chaotic mess. But for me to complain about production being too raw on a DM album, it has to sound really bad. I mean, I love a raw Black Metal production but I think it doesn't serve a DM album very well, if it's nearly as raw as Black Metal. The more chaotic nature of DM makes it hard to hear things well enough when production is really raw, especially if the drummer uses lots of blast beats (which is very often the case in DM). For example, I could not imagine how Nile or Origin would sound with a production kinda like Darkthrone or Taake. I think it would be unlistenable.
Yet I prefer by far the old school DM sound to the plastic shit we often hear nowadays.

Well put. Completely agree.

The production on this album has never bothered me. I'm probably used to it due to listening to so many lo-fi, sloppy indie band albums.

I love how people who weren't around when the album was released complain/whine about the production. It is clear all of you want a cleaner sound than this...

One cvan clearly hear the music here if one really focusses.

I have no idea why people bitch about the production so much.

Written by Guest on 14.03.2015 at 19:03

I have no idea why people bitch about the production so much.

Probably cause it's goddamn awful and single-handily brings down the album. The music itself sounds good, but there's simply no being able to enjoy it.

Written by deadone on 16.03.2015 at 03:26

Have you actually listened to this?

Yea? I always thought it sounded cool. It feels suffocating and is like having your head being ground into a pulp so I feel it really fits the album. Plus I can hear everything just fine.

Of course, production quality in general rarely has any effect on me. To me, saying an album is shit cause of the production is like saying a book is shit because of the font it was printed on. Though I might be in the minority on this issue.

If it wasn't for the shitty production I'd rate it higher, unfortunately it does affect my experience. Like deadone just said about production, ''it has a massive impact on the music'' and this album is an ultimate proof of this. I'm sure there's a hidden jewel buried under that wall of shit...

Yeah I can hear the music here. Yall just deaf

It's hard to believe this came out in 1988, it must of sounded brutal as hell back in the day. What's amazing is how fast metal had evolved from the early 80's, to the late 80's, from the beginning of the decade metal was just starting form, you only really had thrash and heavy metal, but suddenly by the end of the decade you had death metal, then more extreme subgenres like grindcore.
Scum may of been the first major breakthrough in the grindcore scene, but it was this Carcass debut that really pushed the limits, the vocals were Inhuman for back then, and those chainsaw riffs must of sounded crazy, and that album cover, well..

The issue I have, which is what has been pointed out already above, is the terrible production. Bands from extreme metal, in particular early black metal, were known for their lo-fi production, but this takes the biscuit, the production here is amongst the worst I've ever heard, and I do like a lo-fi production if done right, but not when it makes the music borderline unbearable to listen too, which this kind of does.

The production sucks, it's great! This is damn raw, even for goregrind. If you don't like raw and abrasive sound, why are you listening to and rating/reviewing goregrind? It's literally called goregrind. Very underrated and in fact one of their best for it's all-out aggression and disgusting sound.

Bitching about the production is like bitching that Candlemass is too slow.
Its Grindcore.

This production is so rough, much worse than i actually remembered it. i guess i just got filtered