Alright, so if you’ve been following metal for any decent amount of time, you’ve probably heard whispers about Carcass being some sort of legendary act from Liverpool that pretty much invented goregrind, then somehow morphed into melodic death metal pioneers. These guys started out making the most disgusting, medical textbook-inspired extreme music you could imagine back in the late 80s, but by 1993 they’d basically reinvented themselves into something completely different with Heartwork.
This album is basically what happens when a bunch of grindcore maniacs decide they actually want to write proper songs and maybe, just maybe, have people understand what they’re singing about. The production here is absolutely massive, those B-tuned guitars sound ridiculously heavy, and Jeff Walker’s raspy vocals are front and center without Bill Steer’s lower growls to muddy things up. Ken Owen’s drumming is technical as hell but still groovy enough to headbang to, which is no small feat when you’re trying to balance extreme metal with actual melody.
The title track “Heartwork” is probably the best example of what they were going for, it’s got this perfect mix of aggressive verses and surprisingly catchy choruses that somehow doesn’t feel like they sold out. Then you’ve got “Embodiment,” which is probably the most melodic thing on the whole record, just cruising along for five and a half minutes without ever getting boring. “No Love Lost” brings back some of that old Carcass brutality for anyone worried they’d gone completely soft, with plenty of growling and those chunky low-pitched guitars doing their thing.
Look, this isn’t their goregrind masterpiece – if you want that nastiness, go back to their earlier stuff. But Heartwork is the album that basically created melodic death metal as we know it. Yeah, it’s more accessible than their previous work, and sure, some purists probably cried about it at the time, but you can’t argue with influence. This thing paved the way for pretty much every melodic death metal band that came after, and it still sounds heavier than most modern metal despite being over 30 years old. If you’ve never checked out what happens when extreme metal decides to embrace actual songwriting without losing its teeth, this is your starting point.