Review by Ben for Carcass - Heartwork (1993)
An extraordinary band that pushed the boundaries of melodic brutality...and succeeded brilliantly!
Carcass' evolution didn't always please everyone. Beginning their journey as a rather raw (and pioneering) goregrind outfit on Reek of Putrefaction, the band added more of a death metal element to Symphonies of Sickness, before leaving the grindcore behind completely on the brilliant Necroticism release. Heartwork finds the band adding a hefty dose of melody to proceedings without letting go of the death metal backbone. Throughout each of these steps there were unhappy fans, disappointed that the band was moving away from the style they personally enjoyed, but there's no doubt that on each occasion they gained masses of new fans in the process.
I think Heartwork is the stage where this fan (at first anyway) found himself a bit disappointed with the new direction. Necroticism is one of my all-time favourite albums and most definitely one of the finest death metal releases ever recorded. To find my beloved and brutal Carcass shedding the blastbeats and toying with melodies was reason for more than just concern and I must admit that I almost wrote this album off after just a couple of listens. But once I settled in and gave Heartwork some time I not only found it growing on me, but I also started to think of it as a fantastic album itself that doesn't really have any flaws.
One of the differences to be found on Heartwork is that Jeff Walker is now the sole vocalist. His raspy yet powerful delivery no longer joined by the varying styles of the other members of the band. As always, Steer and Amott produce fantastic riff after fantastic riff which, while certainly not as vicious as on previous albums, are still shredding enough for any fan of death metal. Ken Owens’ drumming was always one of the best things about Carcass and he still gets to show his stuff on Heartwork, even if the intensity of the work has been lessened somewhat. Carcass were one of the tightest bands imaginable by this point and each member played a huge role in the result.
Highlights for me are the title track, Embodiment, Blind Bleeding the Blind and Death Certificate, but there are no bad tracks to be found on this classic. It's a case of a band that were already extraordinary having the guts to try something different and still managing to come up with an incredible product. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for their Swansong just a few years later. But that's another story...