Here's a reissue of these Swedish grinders' debut LP, "Alive Autopsy" LP, as well as their debut 7", "Trip to the Grave", all on one handy CD for nearly 45 minutes worth of material. Expect tons of blastbeats, vocal tradeoffs between rough shouting and raging screams, a couple of raw lead breaks, powerful slow rhythms and some classic grind breakdowns, the works. "Victim of the Anal Abscess" is a bit more moderately paced and has a slight punk edge, and I prefer that style of material overall. "Alive Autopsy" has some unexpected melodies in there, and there's a hilarious fucked up clean break in "The Gay and the Demon" (along with shitloads of ripping death metal runs). Sometimes the faster and more obscurely melodic tracks like "Crazy Island" have a pretty significant black metal influence happening, which always manages to surprise me. I have no quarrels with the recording, really. If I had to comment on anything I'd say the guitars and bass could be a tad louder, but everything sounds pretty good for what's going on musically. It's not necessarily raw but it's not polished, etc. I like the way the guitars and bass interact a lot. Of course the 7" is a little bit rougher and not as clear, but it still sounds fine for the most part. The fact that "We Love Grind We Love Fun" is emblazoned across a couple of areas of the packaging definitely ties in to the amusing artwork here, and I think these guys handle their humor very well for what they do. The lyrics are more like weird little stories than anything else, dealing with anything from spicy food, to anal abscesses, to He-Man undergoing a sex change operation. Admittedly the lyrics do sometimes get more immature and silly than funny, but... they're certainly "creative" fellows, heh. In the end this is a good CD, but I do get a little tired of it since a lot of the songs sound very similar to one another. It can be fun material, and when they spice up the rhythms they can reach the level of Terrorizer in my book, but they don't stay at that mighty level consistently. I think the focus on these older tracks too often gravitates towards speed, speed, and more speed. And that's fine, it just wears thin on me after awhile, leaving only a few tracks to really jump out. So... it's not as good as their more recent efforts, but it's still in the same general vein, so dedicated fans should quite enjoy this.
[Razorback]
Running time - 42:24, Tracks: 27
[Notable tracks: Victim of the Anal Abscess, Repulsive Regurgitation, Land of the Sick, The Brutal Corpse]
Razorback Records - http://www.razorbackrecords.com
