Carcass – Despicable (Review)

Carcass Despicable

The world of metal has changed drastically over the past few decades; a fact that everyone everywhere can agree upon without question. When Carcass had initially left us several years ago, they had gone under some tremendous changes themselves, but their status as icons of metal the likes of which still persist to this day have never faltered even for a single moment. When they got back together, the scene roared with excitement. When they dished out their comeback album of “Surgical Steel”, it was garnered with a ton of praise for good reason. Now, seven years later, we’re given another fresh offering that we can sink our teeth into in order to get our proper shot of Carcass that we’re always clamoring for, and to say that it delivers on every expectation that we may ever have from this band nowadays would be a gross underestimation of what is accomplished with the limit but intense confines of “Despicable”.

Four tracks are rarely enough to make a big impression, but when you’re a band that’s as high of a caliber as what we see here with Carcass you really don’t have to make an impression since the chances of it being of quality right out of the gate are, typically, quite high. Sticking with their sound that can be likened to melo-death more than anything else, “Despicable” checks off all the right boxes that are needed in order to deliver us an experience that is undoubtedly a worthy effort from the likes of Carcass and a damn good shot of excellence that we’ve been needing more and more of in recent times. Everything that we see throughout this short but effective EP is prime Carcass the likes of which we can only ever hope for while we’re stuck waiting for new material, and it’s between all the riffs and trademark aggression that “Despicable” instantly makes itself known as a work that is not to be underestimated nor considered a stain upon the reputation of the band that made it. Along with gory lyrical subjects and an ever-present sense of viscera raining onto the pavement, Carcass does nothing but engage the listener with the sound that they have been honing ever since their bombastic return, and to say that it has become much sharper and exponentially deadlier would be putting it mildly given how lethal it all is right from the very beginning!

It’s the exact thing we could’ve possibly hoped for when considering new material from modern Carcass with every moment of this blood-soaked work containing excellence that only comes naturally for this band with each song getting better and better with each successive listen that you give to it, and with an incredibly infectious nature that number will surely grow very quickly. The whole of “Despicable” is something that every Carcass fan should absolute with great haste the second that it is released for it has virtually everything that you could ever ask for, and it delivers that but so much more without breaking a single sweat for the entire ride.

“Despicable” releases on October 30th via Nuclear Blast Records! You can pre-order the album via multiple sources here, and stream the singles on Bandcamp here.

Track Listing:
1. The Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue
2. The Long And Winding Bier Road
3. Under The Scalpel Blade
4. Slaughtered in Soho