Band:	Carcass
Album:	Heartwork
Style:	Melodic death metal
Release date:	October 18, 1993
A review by:	Herzebeth

Disc I [CD]
01. Buried Dreams
02. Carnal Forge
03. No Love Lost
04. Heartwork
05. Embodiment
06. This Mortal Coil
07. Arbeit Macht Fleisch
08. Blind Bleeding The Blind
09. Doctrinal Expletives
10. Death Certificate
11. This Is Your Life [bonus]

Disc II [2008 re-release bonus DVD]
The Pathologist's Report - Part IV
01. Lyrical Inspiration & Themes
02. Parr Street Studios
03. Colin Richardson As Producer
04. H.R. Giger
05. Where Your Hearts Still Into The Work?
06. Touring The Album
07. Veggies & Vegans
08. The Importance Of Mike
09. Mike's Departure
10. Arbeit Macht Fleisch

Classic Monster of Earache Records! Highly Recommended

Some say Heartwork is the last good album that carcass made in their career, well sure it isn't the great symphonies of sickness, but it has some good highlights hidden that most people don't ever hear or refuses to hear.


To begin with, the vocals in the entire CD are quite different from the other Carcass albums, here Walker screams more than he growls (in fact since Necroticism: Descanting the Insalubrious the vocals were a lot more different), it sounds a lot like Chuck's voice from the band Death, but not in a bad way, the vocals are fine and Walker knows how to give the album a great environment.


The lyrics are no longer about virulent diseases or rotting corpses, so in this album there are no genitals grinded and no anal tracts vomited of any kind. The lyrics here are more about images than stories, it is the case of Arbeit Mach Fleisch and No Love Lost, most of the lyrics have philosophical matter in a Carcass kind of way, and mainly all the lyrics are about avant-garde art like Heartwork "Works of art, painted black?A canvas to paint, to degenerate". The artwork is excellent, the cover art design was in charge of H.R. Giger the creator of the monsters in all the Alien movies, so you get the idea.


Now about the music, the leads in the guitar section are overwhelming, Steer and Amott make some incredible riffs and complex leads in some songs, the drums and the bass are not what we were used to, in some songs the drumming is killer and in others it's just standard with typical rhythm, the same thing for the bass; yes this is the main reason why people called this The First Melodic Death Metal Album. The best song in the album in my opinion is Arbeit Mach Fleisch, this song is Remarkable here all the instruments have something good to highlight, the riffs and leads, the drums, the vocals and bass are astonishing, not to mention that it is the strongest song in the album, so this may be THE song on this album, Blind Bleeding The Blind, Buried Dreams and No Love Lost are also overwhelming songs maybe because this are the only songs where the music was entirely written by Steer without Amott's influence, who knows?


A good album merit to be listened, not the best Carcass's Work (though it can be the best for some people, including the band members themselves) but sure it's high-quality and some songs are amazingly well played and recorded, the production is very good I didn't found any mixing flaws and the sound is exceptionally clean. So here it is, Heartwork people..buy it, you don't need more reasons.