Symphonies of Sickness
Occupation
- Ken Owen: Vocals, Drums
- Bill Steer: Electric Guitar
- Jeff Walker: E-Bass
Symphonies of Sickness is the second studio album by English extreme metal band Carcass. It was released in December 1989 Earache Records and in the U.S. on Combat Records. The music magazine Terrorizer it chose in 2009 to 4th place its list of the Principal European grindcore albums. In addition to the records release a CD with 16 additional songs from the previous album Reek of Putrefaction appeared.
Formation
The album consists of six older songs that had been previously published by Carcass on various demos, as well as four new songs. These were very different from what the group had previously written to songs and represented according to Bill Steer the musical direction in which Carcass wanted to develop. In a contemporary interview Bill Steer paid tribute Although the U.S. Death Metal bands respect, however, denied to have been influenced the songwriting of this music, and cited as a major influence still the early hardcore punk. In July 1989, Carcass went into the Slaughterhouse studio to record the songs with producer Colin Richardson. Unlike the previous studio album, the musicians had about four weeks time for the recordings. When publishing Earache Records decided the CD version as an incentive to 16 tracks of the debut album Reek of Putrefaction to expand. The band respected this decision, although they would rather have added some new titles for these purposes during the studio stay.
The album was released in December 1989 on LP, CD, MC and picture disc in 2002 was a re-release in various limited editions, one of which is limited in Germany with red vinyl and 1,000 copies. In October 2008, a digipak, containing in addition to the CD and DualDisc appeared. On the audio side there was the demo Symphonies of Sickness, on the video side a band biography titled The Pathologist 's Report Part II - Propagation.
Reception
For Natalie J. Purcell, the first step towards the Carcass of Death Metal, they played on the subsequent album was the album with its " catchy and slower pieces ." Says Ned Raggett of Allmusic that the better production and the longer playing time of the song was a step forward without Carcass would have lost some of their energy. Especially the second piece Exhume to Consume emphasizes the reviewer and referred to it as " absolute highlight of Carcass ". André bean bag from Ox fanzine called Symphonies of Sickness as " grindcore masterpiece ," which to this day is unmatched by a combination of "musical brutality with smart songwriting ". The U.S. music magazine Decibel led the album 2011 in the category Disposable Heroes (German: , expendable heroes ' ) as an overrated album with cult status. For author Jamie Getz is the album not yet Grindcore Death Metal, he referred to the guitar solos as weak, the breakdowns as failed and criticized that longer pieces like Empathological Necroticism not come too long to the point.