I've been buried under the glistering summer heat, enjoying the calm spiritual death of my burning summer break of a chemistry student, being turned into a human craving for silence and sleep as a means of enjoying myself (that's also why university is not always the best idea). Then one day I woke up and passed around my Autopsy Severed Survival vinyl and thought 'maybe I should give it a spin'. Which proved a successful means of waking the beast from her eternal summer slumber. Then it lead to me listening to 'Macabre Eternal' as I remember how much I loved and praised it when it first came out. Oh, hooray, down-tuned guitars, ravaging soloing - a glimpse of clear air, finally!
What bums me most about death metal bands created in the new millennia is the way in which they decide to produce their records, absolutely minimalizing the human effort by using machines to do all their work. Don't get me wrong, I don't care whether you work more or less in the studio, I care about the final product, which is the music I am listening to and I definitely don't like my drumming crystal clear and my bass clean and shaved. Autopsy have definitely 'improved' a lot sound quality-wise from their early days. However, what is great sound and production in their case, does not ruin the spirit and smell of this package in the very least. You get straight, non cheesy and always as balled, down trodden death metal. Or maybe I should say 'doom death' if we're speaking about some of the songs. What's particularly enjoyable about this album is that is has everything your ears'd need - it has the fast, bludgeoning guitar solos, it has the doomier, slow-paced grim songs, it has everything and done in the finest way possible.
The songs themselves feel complete and actually contain some real meat - such diversity of riffs, astonishingly rude bass; when you have almost forgotten that bands used to record something in such a raw way - you get it - the bass is fucking there, it is audible! The most important ingredient in cooking your death metal. Then in the next song you get an acoustic guitar, a plethora of surprises and all of them are good. Just when you think you're hearing the beats of the dead in a slow and grim manner, the next songs throws you at a completely different situation - suddenly you'd be floating in the rives of the underworld hearing a serene chorus. God, I love this album, in its longest and shortest tracks, just the same.
When I am listening to this album I feel like I hold a diamond that I could put in a secret vault and get it out when I really need it. There are very few bands in the world that would produce something with such a high quality these days. It's as if I am listening to the Repulsion demos again but with a much more enjoyable sound and it's not a hundred years ago. There are some albums - whatever you say, you won't to them justice until you finally hear the material and this is one of them.
