AUTOPSY "Mental Funeral" LP

AUTOPSY "Mental Funeral" LP

Mandatory reissue of this West Coast death metal classic.

150gram black vinyl LP in heavy board gatefold jacket.
Euro Import

One of the early breed of US death metal acts, Autopsy formed in 1987 in San Francisco, & released 4 albums on Peaceville Records - beginning with the classic debut `Severed Survival` in 1989 - before disbanding in 1995, with members going on to form Abscess. Mental Funeral was Autopsy’s second studio album of brutality & depravity - originally released back in 1991

Death metal has changed quite a bit since the birth of the genre. Every aspect of sonic extremity that could be conceived has been pushed, be that the tempo, production, level of consonance (what’s usually called “harmony”), chromaticism, vocals, and everything in between. Formed in 1987 in California, Autopsy have seen all of that evolution from the very start and always chose during their formative years to be a part of the group pushing boundaries, ignoring at all times what might prove to be more marketable or trendy to pursue their own form of sonic barbarism and their own always-disgusting horror aesthetic.

Even at the start, Autopsy was controversial in many ways. Their first album, Severed Survival (Peaceville Records, 1989), featured a LP cover of a man being torn apart, which proved aggressive enough to be censored; issues of the album for years after the first press came with less gore-heavy alternate artwork. This was no one-off, and each album would be increasingly disgusting. When asked about why their lyrical themes “get sicker from album to album” in a 1993 interview, Chris mentioned that most bands get “weaker, wimpier and more commercially listenable” with each album, and “we figured that it would be good for us to do the opposite” (Voices From the Dark Side, Issue #2).

That focus on standing out from the herd and ignoring what was necessarily the best for them commercially extended past their aesthetics, and carried into the band’s songwriting. A revelation to many in the scene, the band’s songs focus on alternating slow and fast parts, which was in direct contrast to the need for speed that dominated the contemporary death metal world at the time. Jari Heinonen from seminal Finnish death metal band Funebre put it best when discussing its influence on his music — “Brutal, raw, real fast one minute and then very slow and heavy the next.” (Rotting Ways to Misery: The History of Finnish Death Metal, p. 273)

Tracklist

Twisted Mass Of Burnt Decay 2:15
In The Grip Of Winter 4:08
Fleshcrawl 0:35
Torn From The Womb 3:18
Slaughterday 4:04
Dead 3:18
Robbing The Grave 4:19
Hole In The Head 6:03
Destined To Fester 4:33
Bonesaw 0:45
Dark Crusade 3:54
Mental Funeral 0:36