Carcass - Necroticism - Descanting the Insalubrious

Carcass took the gore-soaked grind of their early records and gave it a medical degree on Necroticism - Descanting the Insalubrious, the 1991 album where Liverpool's most clinical band learned to write riffs you could hum.

This was the third Carcass album and the first with guitarist Michael Amott beside Bill Steer, with Jeff Walker on bass and vocals and Ken Owen behind the kit. The songs got longer and more ambitious, built from shifting sections rather than short bursts of noise, and the record became the hinge between their grindcore beginnings and the melodic death metal that followed.

"Inpropagation" opens the album with grinding momentum before the band lock into the twin-guitar precision that defines it. "Corporal Jigsore Quandary" carries one of the great riffs in extreme metal, nimble and strangely catchy under the growls, while "Incarnated Solvent Abuse" swings with a groove that heads straight for the neck. "Symposium of Sickness" stretches out into a small epic. Lyrics read like a pathology textbook left out in the rain, with Walker's rasp and Steer's lower roar trading lines.

It remains a cornerstone for anyone who loves their metal heavy, technical and blackly funny. This Earache pressing puts a genre-shaping record back on the turntable where its riffs belong.