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The slaughter continues… this week will be a weird one as I head for Texas to get infinitely bummed out on indie rocking douche bags all trying to get their stupid art band signed to Matador. “First world problems” as they say. I still plan to have content coming daily, but I’m not sure how it’s going to work out yet - so don’t freak.

Anyway… here’s a death metal standard - Autopsy “Severed Survival” lp on Peaceville. This copy has the original artwork on the sleeve, which of course means it’s not a repress. Autopsy stood out during the early 90’s death metal flood, in part because they worked a sound that had more of a connection to hardcore and punk, with a prominent and dirty bass sound, and a relatively (compare to Sunlight or Morrisound) raw recording. The vocals, while definitely in a death metal style growl, were also free of much processing or effects, which kind of puts this lp sounding more like a lot of band’s demo tapes, only without the shitty tape noise. When compared to peers like Entombed or Deicide, or even Carcass after their first lp, Autopsy sound downright rustic. You take a song like Service for a Vacant Coffin which has al the memorable qualities of the best of the aforementioned groups, but almost going back to a riff that you would have heard on To Megatherion, it just stands apart from something like Morbid Angel where everything is blurring together after the first 5 minutes. BTW: the crucial bass playing on this album is courtesy of Steve DiGiorgio, one of the few Death Metal bassists to play with his fingers instead of a pick, which partially accounts for the unique bass sound.

Some other things to think about:

1) Cooch’s (that’s Chris Minnicucci to you outsiders) brother used to be a serious Metal Maniac in the 80’s and 90’s, he says Autopsy is still the best. He’s mainly into baseball cards now.

2) Ray Santilli, the conman behind the Alien Autopsy hoax of the 90’s originally worked in the recording industry. I know it may come as a shock that someone working in music turned out to be a conman, but pick yourself up off the floor. The claim was that Santilli had recovered an original film reel documenting the autopsy of an alien recovered from the alleged Roswell crash site. The footage was broadcast on Fox, (maybe not the Peaceville of broadcast tv, but probably the Earache, or perhaps Relapse) but later revealed to be a hoax. Santilli claimed there had been an original film reel, but that it had been damaged after he viewed it, and only a few frames were salvageable, so he recreated the alleged footage in an empty apartment done up to look like a hospital. Interestingly, when Santilli worked in the music industry, one of his ventures was having artists rerecord their classic tracks for new releases, probably to be sold in rest stops and discount stores.