Review by Sonny for Autopsy - Mental Funeral (1991)

So, while my journey of discovery through the early years of death metal has brought me into contact with many releases for the first time, here is one with which I am exceedingly familiar and which sits near the very top of my list of all-time favourite death metal releases. Mental Funeral doesn't sound like a band playing their instruments, but rather like they are beating the songs out of them. There is a certain looseness to Autopsy's sound that belies the actual abilities of the musicians involved, but which imparts a cavernous brutality to the album that very few have been succesfully able to tap into. The production of Mental Funeral cannot be underestimated and I think Peaceville have managed to reproduce exactly the vibe the band were going for, which speaks of echoing underground caverns reeking of the foetid stench of decay where unspeakable acts of brutality take place. Track names like Twisted Mass of Burnt Decay and Torn From the Womb tell you all you need to know about the bands ethos, but where they score over the rest of the death metal sickos is by their inclusion of doom metal riffing that slows down the onslaught and allows a lurking fear of darkness to envelop the listener rather than an unrelenting bludgeoning that doesn't give any time for reflection. There are few better examples of what real death doom metal should sound like than some of the slower sections here, Robbing the Grave, after it's initial assault, slows to a menacing and spine-tingling crawl that should set the hairs on the back of your neck on end and send any would-be death doom pretenders heading for the exits. The doomy sections breaking-up the out-and-out brutality of the (admittedly still extremely brutal) death metal riffing imbue the album with a more memorable quality than some of the band's more high velocity contemporaries. Check out the riff to In the Grip of Winter for point in question - this has got to be one of the most iconic death doom riffs ever.

I must also state at this point that Chris Reifert is an absolute fucking beast. He made a significant contribution to Death's seminal Scream Bloody Gore, but here with his own band and agenda he has removed any shackles holding him back and his drumming is at times awesome to behold - I'm no technician so don't know how technically sound it is, but it is just so brutally pummelling that it almost becomes a force of nature - Bonesaw is a forty second death metal drumming masterclass in my book. Add to this arguably the filthiest-sounding vocals in all of metal and you can hear that Reifert has stamped his authority all over the album.

The riffs are fantastic and are some of my favourites in all of metal. The solos are wounded, howling beasts that sound like guitarists Danny Coralles and Eric Cutler have tortured their instruments to get them to give them up, suiting the album's atmosphere better than I would imagine a smoother, more technically gifted guitarist like James Murphy, for example, would. The songwriting is brilliant with several twists and turns throughout some of the longer tracks with multiple time changes and transitions and I don't think there is a weak track on the whole album. I think I would go as far as to say if you want an album to sum up what metal is truly all about then you should slam on Mental Funeral and be electrified! This is nothing less than doom-laden metal of death, necrotic and pungent with the malodorous stench of mouldering corpses and is a true classic.