Customer Reviews

Heartwork (CD/DVD)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This reissue of "Heartwork" is excellent-Like the previous one "Necrotism".This is a limited edtion.There is a extra cd of demo tracks from the album and the dvd(Which is always interesting).This is Micheal Amott's last album with Carcass.It's the best Carcass cd ever.The Songs are excellent.The Guitars are so razor sharp and so very heavy.When I frist bought the cd-Carcass gone commercial?.When Earache and Columbia merged together.Still Carcass still kept their heavy sound.This cd put rings around Megadeth's "Countdown to Distiction" during that time-Such a feroarious monster.Highly Reccommeded-Get all these digapak Carcass reissues(Inculding "SwanSong").

This album is a milestone for its time. The recording and mixing done for the album is absolutely spectacular considering how a lot of other underground death metal bands sounded at the time. This thing sounds like it was recorded recently, that's how good it is.

The album itself is a masterpiece. There's a reason why many metalheads consider this an absolute must-have album.

Come on folks, if you missed out on this the first time around you got another chance to sample the godfathers of grindcore gore. On this outing they were a more mature band than the one on "Symphonies of Sickness" or"Reeks Of Putrefication". The new focus and command of their instruments is obvious on the complexity of the arrangements the way they go from classic colossal riffs to death grind and dirge, with constant melodic lead guitars comin' at you left and right. The vocals are a step up from the past, but thats not saying much if your familiar with the raspy and harsh growls they spit out.This is for the more tech death metal fans.Not as grinding as earlier releases. A big influence on the melodic death bands we hear today. Featuring the talents of Bill Steer and Michael Amott together on lead guitars.Nothing special about the dvd, kind of goes right by, lotsa killer music to listen to...

When Heartwork came out alot of death/grind fans panned the album, which I thought was wrong, the album had a cleaner sound, but no less heavier sound. The band was getting more popular and because they incorporated some slower parts the album really was not commercial by any stretch of the imagination. Songs like carnal forge, This Mortal Coil the awesome title track or the best song on the album Arbeit Macht Fleisch grinded pretty hard, just had more melody. The riffs were simply killer and still are. I can remember Headbanger's ball playing the Heartwork video each week along w/Morbid Angel's rapture video-good times. Anyway again Earache has released a monster remaster and the sound packs so much more heaviness and loudness than the original. Lyrics reprinted on the multi fold out digipack and the dvd has the 4th part documentary. Extra disc includes demos of the album, nothing too special in that dept. Anyway Heartowrk was the album that platooned the band even further and was the last great record for the band. Unfortunatley the band tarnished the name a bit w/the release of Swansong, their last release which really was lame. Heartwork still stands up today and has aged well as a death/grind release.

As far as I'm concerned Carcass' Heartwork was a true masterpiece within the death metal genre. Some say Heartwork is the last good album that carcass made in their career, well sure it isn't the great symphonies of sickness or Necroticism: Descanting the Insalubrious, but it has some good highlights and some excellent songs hidden that most hardcore metalheads refuses to hear, why? well because they think that Carcass has sold out which is ridiculous because they still sound heavy and just as good as before. Coinciding with Carcass' summer reunion shows, Earache is re-releasing their albums in Dualdisc format with brand new interview footage. While Earache Records are notorious for their douple-dipping incessant re-releases (At The Gates' Slaughter Of The Soul has been released FIVE TIMES!), the new footage present here lends a feel of worthiness to the proceedings. Plus, its nice to have these albums available once again since they were out of print for a long period of time. Heartwork is probably the band's best album, slightly ahead of its predecessor Necroticism and heading straight in the direction of the unfairly criticised Swansong. To begin with, the vocals in the entire CD are quite different from the other Carcass albums, here Walker screams more than he growls (in fact since Necroticism: Descanting the Insalubrious the vocals were a lot more different), it sounds a lot like Chuck's voice from the band Death but not in a bad way, the vocals are fine and Walker knows how to give the album a great environment.

The lyrics are no longer about virulent diseases or rotting corpses, so in this album there are no genitals grinded and no anal tracts vomited of any kind or human body parts used for glue sniffing LMAO!. The lyrics here are more about images than stories, as in the case with Arbeit Mach Fleisch and No Love Lost, most of the lyrics have philosophical matter in a Carcass kind of way and mainly all the lyrics are about avant-garde art like in the excellent track Heartwork "Works of art, painted black...A canvas to paint, to degenerate". The artwork is excellent, the cover art design was in charge of H.R. Giger the creator of the monsters in all the Alien movies so you get the idea. Now about the music, the leads in the guitar section are overwhelming, Steer and Amott make some incredible riffs and complex leads in some songs, the drums and the bass are not what we were used to, in some songs the drumming is killer and in others it's just standard with typical rhythm, the same thing for the bass; yes this is the main reason why people called this The First Melodic Death Metal Album.

The best song in the album in my opinion is Arbeit Mach Fleisch, this song is truly awesome. Here all the instruments have something good to highlight, the riffs and leads, the drums, the vocals and bass are astonishing, not to mention that it is the strongest song in the album, so this may be THE song on this album. Blind Bleeding The Blind, Buried Dreams and No Love Lost are also great headbanging tracks maybe because these were the only songs where the music was entirely written by Steer without Amott's influence, who knows?. My praise also goes to the quality of these re-releases. The DVD side of the disc comes with the 4th part of an extensive, album specific series of interviews which continues the documentary called Pathologist's Report, covering everything from a return to the rehearsal rooms to Jeff Walker's dissatisfaction with Bill Steer not doing vocals on the album. In addition to this, the album comes with a bonus CD featuring the full record recorded in demo format-interesting for the curious and a little pointless, but nothing to take points away for. This is a great record from Carcass that is meant to be played loud in order to enjoy the experience, while not the best of Carcass' work (though it can be the best for some people, including the band members themselves) but sure it's high-quality and some songs are amazingly well played and recorded, the production is very good and I didn't find any mixing flaws and the sound is exceptionally clean. So here it is, Heartwork people..buy it, you don't need more reasons.

This band just blows me away everytime I hear this CD. it is so raw, technical and intense. This is a solid recommendation!

Carcass at its finest moment, in my opinion. Incredible production, Well written songs, intense riffing, Carcass doing waht it does best. Mixing melody with brutality.

I recomend this work of the band which take turne this Days. Michael Amott, respected Guitar Player of the Metal Scene in the world, this days in "Arch Enemy", play with "Carcass" and make shows with them around the world, on tour "Exhumed to Consume 2008", this is the Best Work of the band.

the guitars sound very weak to me,there sound is just not heavy enough for the vocals.The leads are cool but the rhythm guitars sound a bit soft in the mix.I think they should sound much more heavier sounding to compete with the singers vocals.I like these guys,I just think they should rethink the guitar sound a little bit more in the future.Its a good effort just not good enough for me yet.

"There is nothing wrong with change, if it is in the right direction." For these once-innovators of death metal and grindcore, I do not believe lukewarm guitar heroics qualified as positive change. Along with Slaughter of the Soul, here is the seed of that new wave of Maiden-revivalism-in-disguise gothenburg and metalcore rubbish that made metal so unlistenable and sterile in the 00's. I have forgiven that controversial At The Gates album for its sins against invention, but Heartwork is just hopelessly bland on its own terms. Samey harmonized thrash riffing just sits there in an emotional vacuum to bridge between show-offy blues ham solos, and the lyrics are particularly random and inane since their transition from gory medical diction, ranging from vague hate anthems to leaden semi-blasphemy.

This one has been vindicated by history somewhat, but it was a crushing disappointment back in the day. And to those who don't think music should be disposable or safe, a disappointment it remains.