1. Carcass - Ronnie James Dio Stage - Sunday, August 11th 2024 - 6.55 pm

A music journalist’s role demands absolute objectiveness and critical distance. Well bugger that for a game of soldiers as Sunday night belches forth my singular favourite band in the entire universe, Liverpudlian gods of grind, Carcass. This is where I cast aside my objectivity and just superlative to my heart’s content about how much I love this band.

We met by means of an old-fashioned fm radio where you had to find the channels via a rather sticking knob. I was trying to find something to listen to on a Thursday evening and by chance caught tracks from their debut “Reek of Putrefaction” being played by John Peel. Everything changed that night. Suddenly my understanding of what was possible within the realms of music was expanded tenfold. Suddenly I found something that was nasty enough to meet my expectation of what true metal could really sound like. Suddenly I discovered other young people who felt just as disenfranchised as I did.

The beauty of Carcass is that I have grown with them. The following year “Symphonies of Sickness”  moved from grime to death metal in exactly the same way as I was recalibrating towards a love of the burgeoning Floridian seen. Then the 1991’s “Necroticism – Descanting the Insalubrious” saw an increase in technicality and complexity just as I was calling out for my music to delve far beyond the confines of chugging guitar and soaring vocal. 

Carcass have never made the same album twice. Two years later in 1993 they gave us “Heartwork”, an absolute breathtaking record that foretold melodic death almost 6 months before it happened in Gothenburg. But clouds were gathering on the horizon and recording of their fifth album “Swansong” proved to be the catalyst of their end. They have ceased to be a band before the record was even released, which is a real travesty as it gave us black and roll almost two decades before Kvelertak decided that it would be fun to mix Status Quo with extreme metal.

But you can't keep a band of this stature down. In 2008 they returned and have now been together longer than they were in their first incarnation. They are quite simply the greatest metal band because they have never stayed within one incarnation of the genre. Even their two post split albums, “Surgical Steel” and “Torn Arteries” have wandered around the sub genres not quite sure where to make base.

But what you will witness is just the most finest and furious band of them all. Because Carcass are gargantuan, Carcass are magnificent and Carcass are divine.

Editor's note - we did have to ask Stewart to submit a second version of this as the original preview just read - carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass carcass.