We'll be right back.
Riffology.
We're back.
That is probably one of the most appropriate intros for our podcast name, because it is
just riff after riff after riff after riff after riff.
And I think if you were going to describe Carcass, they're just riff.
They're the masters of riff.
They are riffy.
So I'm going to do the intro.
We're Riffology.
Welcome.
Thank you for getting this far.
Well done, you.
I'm Neil.
I'm Chris.
And this week it's hard work from Carcass.
Carcass.
Which is exciting for me.
We've done, we've been doing all kinds of stuff, haven't we, lately.
This is an album.
It's so weird.
Some of these albums, they're albums I've gone back to and discovered.
Oasis is a really good example of that, right?
So during the period of time that Oasis was big and popular, I was listening to this.
I was listening to this.
I was listening to Bolt Throws and to Napalm Death and Slayer.
And that was my musical, not Oasis.
I didn't listen to that.
It wasn't until I was probably in my 30s that I thought, well, I suppose I should listen to it.
You know what I mean?
And so there's a bunch of these that I've kind of gone back to, which has been phenomenal.
I've been chatting to a few people online about this over the past few weeks.
Initially, people were a little bit, oh, that's crap.
Why are you talking about an album you don't know anything about?
Yes.
And it's a bit like, well, there's something really, I think there's something really nice
about going back and discovering a record that you missed at the time.
Yeah.
For whatever reason, but this one wasn't for me.
This one was a...
You know this thing inside out.
Oh, got you.
This one was a...
I loved the records before.
And this was one that I was, you know, totally waiting for by the record shop.
Kind of, you know, where's my copy?
Where's my copy?
Kind of thing.
And I was petrified that I was going to miss it and it would sell out.
Which in context is super interesting, I think.
Because these records didn't sell that well.
No, they're not big money.
When we speak about records that we've done and we're talking about millions of record
sales and all that, that's not what this thing is.
It was tens of thousands, I think, or 80,000, which was good.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Everyone was like over the moon, I think, for this record.
But yeah, this...
We talked about, like, you had Britpop.
Yeah.
And then we were kind of loosely describing, like, the skunk and Nancy and the wild hearts
and therapy as kind of Brit rock, right?
Yeah.
Kind of this kind of underbelly of Britpop.
This is kind of the darkened underbelly of the underbelly that no one had heard of.
You know, there's a very, I don't know, like a select group of people.
But I don't think it's related.
I don't think it's limited just to the UK.
I think this runs...
There's pockets of the world that loved this stuff.
Yes.
This kind of...
I don't know whether it was like death.
I mean, they kind of...
They called it everything from gore grind and, you know, I don't know, death, I suppose.
At this point, melodic death, maybe.
But they've got all kinds of weird names.
Yeah, yeah.
For me, this stuff is almost like if you...
And I might...
This is going to have people shouting at their computer, right?
But for me, it's like if you take the energy and the dynamic and the riff, riff, riff, riff,
nature of Metallica's early stuff.
Yeah, yeah.
And then cross that with the kind of aggression and grit of something like Napalm Death
and where they got to.
Well, Bill Steer came from...
You kind of get Carcass, in my mind.
Yeah, Bill Steer came from Napalm Death.
And there is this...
I don't know, it's really interesting.
There was a lovely interview I heard once from Jeff Walker.
Jeff Walker's the singer and bass player.
He's the singer and bass player of Carcass.
And the interviewer was asking him pretty much outright, what do you...
And this is not that long ago, right?
Someone was asking him, what do you think about modern extreme metal bands?
And so what's your perspective on them kind of thing?
And he said there's a real difference culturally between the extreme bands of our day
and the extreme metal bands of today.
And he said there's this expectation.
So you can be really successful and popular in an extreme metal band today.
Yes, yeah.
You can do extreme music and you can get really popular and play arenas.
When we did extreme music, you might get five people in a pub.
Yeah.
And that was good.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Do you know what I mean?
The fact that you were allowed to play your music in a pub, that was brilliant.
And he was just saying that we, you know, that was just what we wanted to do.
We didn't, you know, we didn't have any aspirations of being successful or being big or anything.
That was just, that was the music we wanted to do.
And we wanted to play the fact that we ended up being able to record it in a grown-up studio and do all of these things.
You know, it was a rad, the music might be still considered like extreme music, I guess.
Yeah, yeah.
He said, but when we did it, there was no hint of you being, you know, famous at all.
It was just, you know, it kind of came up a little bit later.
Yeah.
I guess there was some kind of following.
But yeah, it wasn't, it wasn't a big deal.
And it was interesting listening to him talk about that, you know, it was almost, and the Napalm Death Boys also talk about this.
It's like, it wasn't expected from us, you know, it wasn't, we were a joke.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
The media, when you would, there was an interview with Napalm Death on one of the BBC radio things, and they were kind of making fun of them.
Yeah, yeah.
But then you had David Peel, do you know what I mean?
He would, he would absolutely, you know, he wasn't, like, joking, and he would have these bands on.
That's how we all found out about Carcass.
Yeah, John Peel.
Sorry, John Peel.
Do you know David Peel was somebody I used to work for?
Oh, really?
That's where my brain's completely malfunctioned.
But yeah, that's how he would find out about this stuff.
Because it wasn't main, it wasn't anywhere.
John Peel was just something else, wasn't he?
He really, he loved music.
He absolutely loved music.
You would get to school and somebody would have a tape.
Yeah.
And it would be, you've got to listen to this.
It was on John Peel.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And it would be, you know, but the bands would be like...
He was the quintessential discovery engine, wasn't he?
He was like, you know...
He would play everything.
You would play, and obviously we would, we wanted this.
Yeah.
But he would play, like, bizarre stuff.
Like, you know, it would just be like a solo artist with a boss and over.
Do you know what I mean?
Or it would be like, you know, there's an inverted brass band.
I mean, you know what?
It's just this bonkers stuff on there.
Yeah.
But it would be like, it felt to me like there was this kind of kernel of innovation here.
So you had, like, Napalm Death.
Yes.
And then, so Napalm Death went off, and then you had Bill Steer went off and went into Carcass.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You had, like, Lee Dorian from Napalm Death who went into Cathedral.
Yeah.
You'll love Cathedral.
Yeah, I need to get onto that.
You said that twice today before recording even.
Properly, like, dark in the forest.
Yeah, yeah.
You know, there's a lot of that.
Yeah, I bet you could probably draw lineage from Cathedral out into the kind of Doom and Black Metal.
You know, all of that kind of part of the Metal Tree.
But then you had, like, Bolt.
The Metal Tree.
But then you had, like, Bolt Thrower.
Yes.
As well.
And we were finding out about this stuff.
Yeah.
You know, and then it grew.
Then there were loads of other bands that kind of just came from that scene.
Yeah, yeah.
But it was, yeah, it felt really innovative to me.
Yeah.
It felt like it came from nowhere.
You know, you had the, I guess, the big American thrash bands.
And you had, you know, other stuff that was happening.
But this felt like it was ours.
Yes.
I mean, I felt it came from the UK.
It came from, like, you know, Napalm Death were Birmingham and Carcass were Liverpool.
Yeah, yeah.
It just felt like, you know, it felt like it was our music.
But when, it's funny that when you say, when you say Birmingham.
Yeah.
You can imagine this music emerging from Birmingham.
And because there was, like, the Judas Priest, there was the Black Sabbath, there was a few
other guys.
Like, Napalm Death, is that Birmingham as well?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, there was that kind of melting pot there of kind of dark, extreme kind of metal sounds.
But then you talk about Liverpool, you don't, you don't expect.
The Beatles, isn't it?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, that kind of neck of the woods.
The punky in places, but he wasn't this kind of.
Again, Jeff Walker talks about this, about them not feeling particularly.
Like they're part of it.
Yeah, they weren't part of a scene or anything.
And then there was a bit of a scene, but they didn't feel like they kind of fitted in necessarily.
But yeah, I always loved them.
There was just something really cool about Carcass all the time.
Yeah, they, I mean, this record particularly, the melodic nature started to come through.
So, I think it got more space, you know.
I think on previous records, there was a tiny bit of that.
Yeah.
But it was like on here, they, they, the songs, there were bits in there that weren't extreme anymore.
They were just kind of almost, you know, they were pretty cool and pretty melodic.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like, no, I don't think anyone was doing anything quite like that at the time.
No, no.
You had Bill Steer and Michael Amott.
Yes.
Playing on this.
So, Michael Amott, sorry, because before we press record, I was trying to get my head
around all this.
Michael Amott is arch enemy now.
Yeah.
And he was like on loan to Carcass, sort of.
Yeah, he, he was sort of like.
Yeah, he was like a session musician, essentially.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think they just needed another guitarist.
He was around and said, yeah, all right, I'll do a bit for you.
And he's dead good.
Yeah, yeah, and contributed a bit.
And I think, yeah, I, it'd be interesting, actually, if I, I've never interviewed Bill
Steer, but one of the things I'd love to discuss with him is how having Michael around.
Yes.
Because I think Bill's, Bill's kind of melodic guitar playing and Michael Amott's melodic
guitar playing.
Yeah.
They're really complimentary.
Right.
And I kind of, after this record, so after Heartwork, I think it went a bit downhill for
them, right?
And they were kind of, they did Swan Song, which wasn't the best style.
It wasn't received particularly well.
I quite liked it.
It wasn't received particularly well.
Then they went on hiatus, which was around like nine, late nine to 96, something like that.
When they came back with Surgical Steel, it was like boom, but it was back to heartwork
for me.
It was back to me.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It was full of melody and full of really, really cool, you know, it was savage, but it was,
it was melodic at the same time.
Yeah.
You know, it's sort of like, like sweet and sour.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It kind of had this thing.
And I, I love.
There is a strange juxtaposition with, with their music.
It is.
It is so, rip your face off.
It's like nasty sounding.
But at the same time, really like pleasant.
Yeah.
It like punches you in the face, kicks you in the balls and they go, oh, have a cuddle.
You know, and it's, it's, it's that, isn't it?
Yeah, yeah.
But yeah, it's interesting to me that, the, the, the sound, the band sound changes a little.
And then I always wonder how much of that was kind of Michael Amor almost giving Bill permission
or kind of going, hey, we can do this.
And then Bill just going, oh God, that's amazing.
Yeah, yeah.
And then him like properly stepping into that, into that role and kind of like, ah, yeah.
Okay.
I, you know, because it's, it's, it was definitely there.
You can hear it in, you can hear it previously, but it's like, it was, I don't know.
It's like, like taking the top off a packet of Pringles, the melody just goes whoosh and
out it comes, but it's woven through everything.
And yeah, ah, yeah, it's just a, um, just a mega record.
This is proper, man.
I've got a couple of, uh, Gibson melody makers from about 61 and I had a friend, uh, replace
the pickups, just make them workable for this like kind of music.
Uh, that was Andrew Scrimshaw, he's a master luthier and the pickups, uh, Monty's pickups,
which is from, well, he's a friend, but I think he's moved to Chelmsford or somewhere
like that, but his pickups are so good.
Like his, his rhythm pickup by the neck is, um, I'm used to Gibson neck pickups and they're
kind of muddy and, and his pickups are, there's so much detail and kind of transparency with
them.
Um, and we might've been the first band in the UK to use the 5150.
They'd just arrived.
Yeah.
Um, and it, you know, the evidence is there.
Like it really saved the record, but like, yeah.
I mean the Fenderhead initially I wasn't really that into it.
it was too bright for me, but now it's kind of like the thing.
Like, I'm just, I'm just totally sold on it because you can do everything.
Like you could play blues on that head, you know, you just dial everything in the right
way.
And it's just a really cool head blues in country.
I'd never liked it.
I would never listen to this.
And then all of a sudden, Oh, I'm ready for it now.
So yeah, it has massively influenced me.
Yeah.
Um, yeah, just, it's just great.
Like the value of a note where you place it, how it feels like, yeah, it's, you know, it's,
it's a lifelong journey.
Yeah.
I'm words of art, picks and clots, an eloquent, ungrieving thought, a nervous thought, many spectrum, really a liberty.
I've been forced to fight it in for trusting deeds, force me to fear, destruction, so joking, thoroughbredness.
Combust the pains, to degenerate, thoroughbredness. Degeneration, combust the pains, to denigrate, thoroughbredness of the full life.
Profound is the beauty of shading, sensory-corrupted persecutions, shadow-explicit, narrowing.
Innocence, and lucid, since it's spelled out, in your vehicle, giving feeling, guide the things, the pain, thoroughbredness.
Combust the pains, to degenerate, thoroughbredness. Degeneration, combust the pain, to denigrate, thoroughbredness.
Darfowl!
Words of heart, bleeding thong, blood and illiquid heart
Chugger, power, victim, victim, deeply, thinly unlimited
Foolish, fear for thought, can't trust in favor of force
Extraction, so choking, so provocative
Breathing, words of heart
Steaming, words of death
I love you.
When we saw them at the download, we watched them at download, and then we watched them
a little bit, it might have been the same year even, or the year after it, Bloodstock.
Yeah, it was the Bloodstock, yeah.
Sunday afternoon, it was lovely.
I remember thinking, these lads are really raw.
Yeah.
They've got a really raw, even though it's super polished, and the ability and the instrumentation
and what they can play is really, really good.
As a sort of combined thing, it was like, this visceral stuff here is, you know, it was really
interesting.
It's a proper band, isn't it?
So I, yeah, they're interesting.
I first saw them live at Leicester Student Union Bar.
Right, right.
With Napalm, Death, and Voltrower.
What a line-up.
And...
And were they all kind of little bands at the time?
I mean, the whole room held 100 people.
Wow.
And it was about half full.
Yeah, yeah.
And I remember being at the bar, and it was one of those gigs where, so I was at the bar,
I was waiting for a pint to be served.
This was back in the days of, like, warm beer and stuff, and I think it cost about 30p or
whatever.
Yeah.
So I'm at the bar, which would have been tight.
I mean, I'm talking about a bar.
This is a Student Union bar, so it would have been...
I probably could have reached my arms out to each side of the bar, right, that's how big
it was.
And there I am, waiting for my pint to come up.
And as it came up, the lights just went down, the stage light came on, and I didn't even
know that that's the room we were going to be in.
The stage was tiny in the corner.
And I turned around, and I could just see Shane Embry's hair.
Wow.
That's all I could see.
His hair was slightly higher than the other people, and the smoke was kind of filling the
room.
But yeah, they were tiny, but I think they kind of earned their place as a band, as a unit,
you know.
And then, so when you see them now on these kind of big stages, or bigger, I mean, certainly
Carcass now are up on the bigger stages.
Yeah, they've always felt like a gang, if you like, as a band.
But it's not quite the same band that was back then.
It was Ken Owen, who was the drummer back then, who, yeah, he stopped playing with them, and
they replaced, I forgot the new guy's name, Daniel.
I remember there were cracking jokes about him being like half his age, or like not born
when they'd recorded this particular record.
Yeah, so most of our songs are older than our drummer.
Yeah.
And I think that's weird.
But he's brilliant.
He's brought up, similarly, I think, to The Wild Hearts.
Yeah, yeah.
Where, you know, Ginger's gone off and built a new band around The Wild Hearts and him,
I guess The Wild Hearts 2.0.
But that's given The Wild Hearts this boost of energy.
That's interesting, isn't it?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And in 2013, like Carcass went on hiatus from like 96 to 2013.
That's a big one, isn't it?
It is.
That's the kind of length of time where you think, nah, not with that.
No, no one saw this coming.
No, yeah, yeah.
No one saw.
I remember, I was reviewing stuff at this point, and I saw Carcass' name in there, and I thought,
oh, this is going to be another reissue.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I don't think I even looked.
I just thought, oh, you know, whatever.
Yeah.
And then I remember it coming out and hearing it and just being just floored.
Right, yeah, yeah.
Not only are they back, but they're back with a, you know, back with a bang.
And was that Surgical Steel?
No.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So that one was, yeah, just phenomenal.
And they, yeah, the, yeah, it's kind of hard to, yeah, the impact that had.
But like some of that energy, I think, came from the new members of the band.
Yes.
I'm sure.
So it's Bill and Jeff Walker still.
But, you know, the band, the extra energy, I think, from having new people around.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, so it definitely helped them.
Definitely helped them.
And then, I mean, I've seen them on a couple of tours since.
I mean, you and I saw them at Download.
We saw them at Bloodstock.
Yes.
And then I shot them on support for Arch Enemy as well.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Which was really cool, actually.
Yeah, because you got them in the same room.
Yeah, I got to interview Michael Amar, and we had a really good chat.
And I was talking to Michael going, are you going to come and play on some of the old songs?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I don't think they want me to do that, but, you know.
But that would have been a proper thing missed for me, that was, you know, having, you know,
like Reunion kind of thing.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Very, very cool.
But the thing that I love listening to from Bill, and also, like, when you interviewed Michael,
was they love their music.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
They really love music in a big way, you know.
And you certainly get that.
And not necessarily the genre that they play either, you know, lots of different things.
I mean, Michael's an absolute kind of, like, extreme metal nerd.
Yeah.
But, like, I would say, like, niche metal.
Yes.
You know what I mean?
So, he was, like, you know, these underground stuff, that's what he loves.
He was explaining to me when Arch Enemy are out on tour, and he said, the rest of the band
are pretty nerdy in that space, too.
He said, you know, the reason that the band get on really well is because we've got, you
know, a lot of similar interests.
But he was saying that, like, Angela used to travel on her own.
Right, wow.
And Elisa travels on her own now.
Yeah, wow, right.
But he said, the rest of the band all travel together.
And he said, like, Elisa will land and go somewhere exotic.
There'll be some kind of thing happening in there that no one will know about, and she
will know about it, and she'll have an invite to it, and she'll go off and be glamorous there.
And he said, like, the rest of the lads will say, we'll meet, we'll go to the bar,
or whatever, we'll go to comic places, we'll go to vinyl stores, we'll go to, you know,
like metal.
And then, you know, and then we will kind of get to, you know, meet up next morning for
breakfast or whatever and go and do the gig.
Yeah.
But it was just fascinating.
You know, he was explaining that they were just heading off into Mexico, which I've never
been before, and I was going, oh, cool.
And then he broke out this list of places to go and visit.
And they were all like these, like, backstreet stores that sold patches or, you know, like
Dungeons and Dragons.
It was just, yeah, one of the nicest people, I think.
Bill, you know, Bill Steer also.
Yeah.
I think they, you can imagine those two getting on really well.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, very, very cool.
Very cool.
And if you get the chance to see Carcass, they are an excellent band live.
They're a really cool band.
Very, very worthwhile to see, I think.
And if you get the chance to see, I'll see you next time.
Bye.
to bleed. Deaconess to feed. Yeah, that's what's. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Before it was a really, well, the way I remember it, it was a fairly small thing. There was a little
cluster of you in the UK and some people in Europe and some people in the States. But, you
know, it's an overused word, but it was definitely underground and everybody either knew each other
or knew somebody who knew the other person. There was a connection there. But it, you know, nothing
can stay like that forever. You know, it's only natural that extreme music is going to get absorbed
into the mainstream. And that's where we're at now, where there's an actual industry built
around extreme metal and people are starting groups expecting to be copular, which is the
exact reverse of what it used to be. I think it used to be an artisan and to be able to go into a studio.
It was a very elitist thing, because it was very expensive. But with technology now, anyone can do it in the bedroom and everyone has aspirations to be on stage, which is fair enough. So it's kind of like there aren't any fans left. I mean, everyone is, as Warhol said, you know, everyone's going to be famous for 15 minutes in a way.
It's got pros and cons that it's open to everybody. Does it necessarily lead to good music? Arguably not, you know?
But I think people's attitudes for wanting to play. I mean, we're talking about heavy metal. For us, it's outside of music. And I think for a lot of kids getting into bands, it's a way for them to be popular with the ladies and make money if that's what they perceive, you know? And it's not... I mean, I think with the younger generation, you know, they want to be football players or film stars or...
musicians. I think we've all had those aspirations as kids, but nowadays, maybe it's a bit easier with YouTube or, you know, the whole internet thing. Everyone can be a star.
And I think that's interesting because, you know, you're kind of the product of the environment. And at the time when Carcass came through, they say they sort of didn't feel like they fit anywhere. But with the industry now, with there being, you know, metal's got its own industry in a way. I always wonder if, you know, would the rawness of bands like Napalm Death or Carcass or whatever, would that translate? Would that get through?
Yeah, it's, you know, they were underground. I mean, there's no two ways about it. We talked about this before with some of these albums where it was tape trading or you knew somebody.
Why the new, like, a lot of it for me was at school, you know, someone would have done tape trading with somebody else and then you'd have got a tape off them. But you knew there was, you knew people or tape trading. But I do wonder a little bit where that is now.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Is it making a playlist on a streaming service and sharing that?
Yeah, there's got to be that.
But do people make time to listen? I mean, that's because there's so much, you know.
I think there's always an underground thing somewhere. You just don't know about it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know what I mean? But yeah, yeah. And I suppose you naturally, there's probably, there's pockets of this underground stuff happening all over the place.
And you only really get to know about it if it gets popular.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But there was a, yeah, for this stuff. And there's a bunch of other bands as well, kind of like, you know, Entombed.
And there's a bunch of stuff in Sweden and in the US as well. You kind of ended up with, you know, Obituary and a bunch of bands around that as well.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But yeah, there were, yeah, I mean, it was incredibly underground, really, really underground. Everything was done by hand.
And, you know, all of the posters and everything was, like, hand done, hand drawn. The tape trading stuff was all kind of back of music magazines and stuff like that.
So, yeah, it was, it, I wonder if we'll see a bit of a resurgence with that, you know, you know, with all this sort of AI stuff that's coming through.
Yeah.
Everything being very, there's going to be this kind of return to something really grassroots.
Anti-technology.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Real, turn auto-tune off, get all that off, stop slicing up drums and lining them all up and all these fashions that, you know.
Well, the recording of this, this is probably a good segue into the recording of this album.
Because I hadn't, and only even until we're doing the prep for the blog, I hadn't realised.
Brifology.co?
Yeah, that, yeah, Brifology.co. I hadn't realised how much effort had gone into this. There's an assumption, I think.
Like, so their first record was Reek of Putrefraction, which sounds, as all of these extreme metal records did in the late 80s, sounds awful.
All of the thrash records did. They just sound bad. The production's just really poor. I don't think I'm going to offend anybody with that.
And then they did Symphonies of Sickness with Colin Richardson. That sounded a bit better.
And then they did Necrotism, Decanting the Insalubrious in 91 with Colin. That sounds pretty good.
And then you move on to Heartwork, which sounds quite good. This record, I think this one sounds, this still holds up today for me.
It's got a nice, it's listenable today. It's pretty cool. And Necrotism is as well. I think that they're both of those two have got quite a nice production, actually.
But, yeah, there is a, like a maturity, I think, to this album in the way it sounds. And I hadn't realised, I was only reading the stuff from Colin Richardson talking about how many days they spent chasing the right guitar sound.
And there's a, because they had that thing with the Frankenstein amp, didn't they? Where they, where they, I think they were something like the first people to really use the PV 5150s.
Yeah.
Which are, you know, high gain amps to guitar.
And I used that much on Circularity.
Oh, what, 5150s?
Yeah, I used quite a few of that sort of vibe. Yeah, I really enjoyed that. And the, yeah, the idea of, they couldn't, still couldn't quite get the sound they wanted and they thought, they, it sounded like it was a fight.
Yeah.
It was a real fight to get the guitar tone right and, you know, use this kind of like, you know, four or five amps blended together with cabs and, you know, kind of to get the sound they wanted.
So, so the engineer, Keith, so it was recorded in Parr Studios.
Yeah, I mean, that's been well used, hasn't it?
Parr Street Studios. The, the funny thing is here, it's got the engineers referenced as Keith Andrews. I think Keith Andrews owns it.
Right, okay, right.
Or built it, or he was a big part of it.
But it talks here about the team spending five days trying different amps, cabs and mic placements to capture Bill Steer's guitar tone.
They tried Soldano, PV 5150s, Messager, Rectifier and Marshalls, but the sound was always too scratchy.
In frustration, they moved the setup back to Studio 3 where they'd recorded the demos.
We had this thing hovering over us, which was like Columbia Records in the USA.
We're going to do it.
So it'd be partially a major label release.
Yeah.
And basically we had more money.
Yeah.
So we spent ages on the thing.
But yeah, the guitar tone thing went on forever.
Honestly, we're like, we're downstairs in the big studio.
Nothing came together.
And at some point, Jeff said, like, look, let's go back to the demo studio where we demoed everything.
Because that sounded good.
Yeah.
And that's where we recorded all the guitars.
Right.
And then we had this weird amp hybrid, which I can't even go into, but it's like three amps at one time.
Sure.
But, you know, Colin was really on board for it.
And Keith Andrews, the engineer, he doesn't get enough praise because he was really a big part of it.
Suddenly everything clicked.
Bill and Michael double tracked their rhythm parts panning left and right and used a combination of 5150s, Marshall 30th Anniversaries, and a mini Marshall stack for added bite, a Marshall governor pedal for overdrive.
The governor.
Wow.
But it's really interesting that they, I mean, five days.
Yeah.
Just chased the guitar sound.
Just on tone for an extreme metal record that they knew wasn't going to sell bucket loads of copies.
This isn't Oasis.
This isn't definitely maybe.
You know, they're not, I think, I think, you know, we did definitely maybe last week that they knew that was going to sell.
Yeah.
I mean, they knew it was going to shift bucket loads of stuff.
They rerecorded the entire record twice.
A couple of times.
Yeah.
But if you think about that, so Karker spending five days chasing guitar tone.
Yeah.
They did the whole of definitely maybe twice in what, two weeks?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's, I think that's incredible.
Yeah.
It really is.
Just, I think for extreme metal back then, the tone,
like the tone of Entombed's albums.
Yes.
Yeah.
That was always with the, the HM2s.
Mm.
And I remember searching, how do you get that guitar tone?
Yes.
And it's literally a HM2 with everything wound up to 11.
Wow.
And you get that you sound like a Swedish death metal band.
Right.
You know, I, it's interesting, but the, the, it was all about the tone.
It was trying to make a dark menacing tone.
Yeah.
But Kark, I mean, Karker to me had always wanted to sound a bit, a bit different.
They always tended to sound a little bit different, but the fact that they went to that much effort,
let's say, to kind of get that tone.
And then it's worth talking about Colin Richardson as well while we're here.
Yeah.
And you know, we've talked, like, I knew who Colin Richardson was.
Yeah.
For this album.
Yeah.
But he also, there's a bunch of my favourite records that he's worked on.
Really?
Okay.
You know, we've talked about that before, when you find a producer and they've done.
So he did Harmony Corruption from Napalm Death, 1990.
That's one of my favourite Napalm Death.
If you don't like Napalm Death and you've never heard them, Harmony Corruption's where to start.
Yeah.
He did Bolt Throwers, The Fourth Crusade, 92.
Yeah.
If you don't like Bolt Throwers, you've never heard them before, that's where to start.
Cannibal Corpse, The Bleeding, again, start there.
Machine Head, Burn My Eyes, the best Machine Head album, I think.
Really, really cool.
And then Fear Factory, D-Manufacture.
Really?
Yeah.
He did that record?
He did that as well.
And while we are doing that, I want to, where's my, oh, what have I done here?
So I've updated the blog.
While we was speaking, I updated the blog and added some stuff in.
Oh, here we go.
So, Par Studios.
Yes.
Where is it?
In Liverpool.
Okay.
Par Street Studios in Liverpool.
The list of albums from here is just extraordinary.
And I assume not, not, not just now, not just.
Oh, God, no.
So Black Sabbath did Forbidden there in 95.
Take That did Progress in 2010.
And Stereophonics did Performance and Cocktails.
That was there.
In 99.
That was Par Street.
Elbow did Asleep in the Back in 2001.
Wow.
Coldplay, who is in the news this week.
That's one of the best things ever, that is.
That just killed me.
The memes off the back of that straight away.
That just killed me.
Did I not?
You just, it was the video of the guy just, they both saw it, the look of horror on her face.
Yeah.
And then he just disappeared down, like off the, off the cam.
That was epic.
That's the birth of so, so much joy in so many, so many memes.
Oh, God.
It's just epic, isn't it?
It's just so good.
But within an hour.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Everywhere was flooded with memes and different things and stuff like that.
The thing is, somebody was saying, if they'd just, like, kissed each other and covered,
no one would have really known, no one would have really known much about it.
It would have been like, oh, yeah, whatever.
Yeah.
Yeah, I thought it was epic.
And then it was the comments going, surely the most embarrassing thing was being caught
at a Coldplay concert.
Which I thought was pretty excellent.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Which Coldplay record was done there?
Two.
Oh, two records were done there?
Yeah.
No, I don't know Coldplay very well.
No, no.
Coldplay shoots.
Yeah, great record.
And a rush of blood to the head in 2002.
So they're early stuff, right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Which was done there.
Although it has told me that what we're going to do next week is performance of cocktails.
Okay, okay.
Because we said we were going to do this.
We said we did say we were going to do it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I like performance of cocktails.
Yeah, I do as well.
And that was done in that studio.
Yeah.
Wow, there's the link.
That's the link, isn't it?
There's the link.
And that's a great record, that is.
I love that record.
It's just, it's just.
I might have to go and record it better than now.
Because there's some good stuff there, isn't there?
Yeah.
Again.
I love the sound of that record, actually.
Yeah.
For those cocktails.
Back to heart work, though.
Sorry.
Even the drums.
Yeah.
They switched the drums around in the different studios.
To get the sound they wanted.
Yeah, and eventually.
So they recorded the album in the smallest, recorded the guitars in the smallest room, and
the drums in the biggest room.
But yeah, I just think, again, very, very cool.
Again, deciding not to use triggered kick drums.
Because triggering was starting to become a big thing now.
But they chose not to, kept it real.
Yeah, they didn't do it.
Bass was tracked with direct and through a cab, isolated in a stone dungeon built from leftover
Yorkshire stone.
I mean.
That's very.
If you're going to do it, that's how you do it, isn't it?
It is.
Very, very cool.
But it's interesting, isn't it?
You know, I remember taking this album.
Me and my friend Russell used to go to an audio store in Tamworth to listen to.
We were both properly into our audio stuff.
And we used to go and listen to really high end, like 10 grand stuff.
So these two kids would turn up to this.
And we'd get Russell's dad to book the things in for us.
And then we'd go and then they'd expect us to turn up there with like, you know, proper
music to listen to.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And this was an album we used to take.
Right.
Okay, yeah, yeah.
And they didn't like that at all.
Really didn't like that.
Can you put some Dire Straits on or something?
They didn't like that.
So we'd get and we'd literally have like four quid between us.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And half of that would be the bus fare to Tamworth.
And we'd be listening to like, you know, 10 grand's worth of gear.
But yeah, lots of really good memories of doing that.
And I think this record stood up pretty well to that.
It sounded pretty.
I think it sounded pretty nice on that kind of stuff.
But yeah, nicely recorded, I think.
We recorded Recapture Faction 87, which is probably the most horriblest, brutalist, sickest
record for that genre.
In a way, that sort of, that was the end of death metal as far as I'm concerned.
I mean, death metal, which is a really hard to define thing.
You know, like I was saying earlier, you know, Metallica were called death metal when they
started.
I mean, to me, death metal is a period of time from about, you know, 84 through to about
87, you know, bands like Hellhammer or Celtic Frost.
That's the same band.
And early Slayer, Venom, early Death, along with all the underground death metal bands.
I mean, all the classic recordings date from that period.
And those bands have either progressed now to really good thrash bands or, you know, they've
just moved on into, you know, a good rock band or whatever.
And any band that's around now calling themselves death metal are basically just bandwagon jumpers.
And, you know, I'm always a bit suspect of anyone who labels the music such a generic sort of
limiting, you know, category because, you know, you just can't really define what death metal
is anyway.
But to me personally, and probably the rest of my band, we feel it's, you know, probably,
you know, mid-80s.
That's a period of time.
It's rather like a band forming today saying that they're punk rock.
That's something that I'm talking years ago as far as we're concerned.
We're more concerned with being a rock band than just some fashionable music genre, you
know, just for the sake of making money or whatever.
If you take each album, they're completely, not completely different, you can tell it's
carcass, but you can tell that we're progressing as musicians and as a rock band or whatever.
We're not really too concerned anymore about, you know, saying that we're totally extreme
and we're brutal.
The truth matters, you know, we're far heavier, more all-round, you know, we're, I'm going
to explain, you know, we're pretty fast, we're pretty slow, we're pretty mid-paced in sections.
We're not technically just a thrash band or a death metal band or whatever people have
been labeling.
We're just a, you know, heavy metal band for the 90s, basically.
We're not formulated, we're not cynical, we don't sit on the side and see, like, bands
getting big and think that we have to go a certain direction to get big.
Because we're not in it to get big, we're in it because we enjoy playing the music and
because, you know, we feel we've got something to contribute.
And maybe if, you know, five years from now, this band, you know, maybe we're never going
to break big or we don't particularly care from one point of view.
People are looking back and will probably say, you know, there's a classic band and you've
got overlooked.
That's probably the case.
But we know deep in our hearts that we're doing something original, that we're progressive.
We're probably, you know, one of the few progressive bands in the left field of wherever this
is called, you know, we don't want to categorise our music, but like I said earlier, we really
see ourselves as a heavy metal band for the 90s, not some fashionable kiddies thing like that.
We'll be right back.
We shared a moment watching Alien, the new one, didn't we?
Was it Alien Resurrection, is that what it's called?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It was good, that was.
It was.
I liked that.
We watched it at the IMAX.
Yeah, we should go and do that again sometime.
I watched the F1 movie there.
There's two things.
There's quite a few things that I want to go and see, and no one will go with me.
What are we watching?
One is 28 years later.
Yeah, we'll go and watch that.
And the other one is the new Jurassic Park.
Yeah, it's fine.
And curiously, Jurassic Park was released in 93.
It's one of my favourite movies.
Dinosaurs eating dickheads.
I love it.
That should be done on the poster.
The best thing ever.
It's so good, isn't it?
That's absolutely got me.
That is a Jurassic Park.
Dinosaurs eating dickheads.
It's so good.
That's amazing.
That first one is just nothing beats that.
Apparently, it's gone back.
The new one's gone a little bit back to that.
Has it?
Yeah.
Oh, good.
Well, yeah, that's got to be done.
Yeah, yeah.
All right.
Dinosaurs eating dickheads.
I should work in marketing.
Release date, 18th of October, 1993.
I'm definitely making that logo.
I'm so sorry.
I'm getting the logo.
Dinosaurs making dickheads.
And then doing, yeah, that's happening.
And t-shirts and that.
Released 18th October, 1993.
Now, everyone's going to lose their minds on that, especially our US colleagues.
Some of our social media followers, especially some of our American friends, are very excited
about release dates.
Right.
Okay.
Especially when they're wrong.
It was released in America on 11th of January, 1994.
I don't care if it's wrong.
The thing is, we talk about time a lot.
We do.
It doesn't really matter, does it?
It's an illusion.
Yeah, it is absolutely an illusion.
Lunchtime, doubly so.
Yeah.
But stop telling us that we've got the date wrong.
Just fix it on Wikipedia.
Just read it off Wikipedia.
Yeah, yeah, that's it.
Don't tell us.
Fix it on Wikipedia.
And then, you know, anyway, I mean, literally no one cares.
We could do a little page, couldn't we?
What we could do is have a page.
A page of things we don't care about.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But what they can do is, like, there's a little form that someone could fill in.
Yeah.
And then it says something like, you know, what have we got wrong this week?
And then they tell us what we got wrong.
They can put it in that.
And then when they click send, it just deletes it.
That's it.
Because we don't care.
That would be brilliant, like shouting into a black hole, wouldn't it?
Void.
Yeah, that's brilliant.
So anyway, they're the dates that I've got from the Wikipedia for it being released.
And I just don't go.
I can remember buying this.
Obviously, I don't remember what day it was.
I remember how I felt.
I remember going to get a bag of chips on my way home.
Great.
But I don't remember the date.
But Wikipedia says 18th of October in 1993, Europe.
Well, there we go.
Genre.
It says melodic death metal and technical death metal, neither of which existed when this album
came out.
I think it would have.
This stuff would have just been called heavy metal.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think it would have been.
Like when I went into Martin's Records in Ashby de la Zouche to buy this.
Yeah.
There wouldn't have been a section called melodic death metal.
Does Martin's Records still exist?
No.
Long gone.
There would not have been those sections.
No.
It would have just been metal and not metal.
Hmm.
Pop.
That's about it.
I think we should have one.
We should have a small record store where we just, it's metal and non-metal.
Yeah, but you'd have had metal, pop.
You wouldn't have had rock.
Yeah, it'd be pop.
It'd be pop rock.
That was the thing, wasn't it?
Yeah, like everything would have come under metal.
Yeah.
So when I used to work in a music shop, it was, there was like catalogue stuff, which
was pop rock.
Yeah.
Which was all alphabetized and they never had all the best stuff in it.
Yeah.
And then there was chart stuff, which I ignored that wall.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then, and then there was the recommended section, which was nice.
Metal.
There was always good stuff in there.
And that was the, that was the John Peel bit.
That was where the magic was.
Yeah, yeah.
Metal.
That's what it's like.
It's all got a little bit too stupid now.
Like, you know, melodic, techo, deatho.
It's just, shut up.
Yeah, yeah.
It's just, it's just.
Post-neo.
Yeah.
Grunge, goth.
Metal.
Cyberpunk.
Metal.
Not metal.
Solved it.
Runtime, 41 minutes, 55 seconds.
So it's an appropriate length.
How many songs though?
10.
That's, that's, that's, both of those are very appropriate for you, aren't they?
Very good, yeah.
Where's the limit?
It's 50 minutes.
55.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
An hour, yeah, as long as it's less than 60.
Less than 60.
Yeah, that's an appropriate length for an album.
See, I'm about, I'm about 64 minutes and.
Two hours long, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, for one song.
If we do, if we do, if we do some of the Pumpkins albums where they go on for like days.
I've forgotten what I'm doing.
I've forgotten what's going on.
Sorry, mate.
We're doing lists and I keep blurting and interrupting you.
And then recorded on Earache Records, who were the best record label back then.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Everything Good was on either Earache or Roadrunner.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
One of those two.
Second is.
They're the best.
And then you had Def Jam for a bit.
Yes.
It was before.
But Def Jam ended up going down the whole like rapping route and all that stuff, didn't
it?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That was, that was your, your man with the weird hair.
Yeah.
But yeah, anyway, releasing the US on Columbia.
Yeah.
Lots.
They, they, Columbia did lots of.
It's only Columbia, isn't it?
It's only owned.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I don't think they owned it then.
No, okay.
Right.
That was later.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It would be interesting to go and have a look at that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know, there might be something we could do actually at some point is go and have a
look at labels.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because there's some really, I think there's some really cool record labels.
Madonna's label and Eddie Rake and Roadrunner and, um, anyway.
It was recorded in Pass Street Studios in Liverpool, which we've talked about.
I'm not sure it's still a studio.
No, no.
I think it's kind of a creative space now.
I don't know if they still do recording there, but, um, super famous for lots of really cool
albums.
Yeah.
Produced by Colin Richardson and engineered by Keith Andrews.
Now, I, again, I think Keith Andrews was a big part of it.
I think it was more, it wasn't just a, you know, lowly engineer.
Got mucked in.
Yeah.
I think he was kind of, um, yeah, fairly important.
Um, uh, uh, yeah, the, the band were Jeff Walker vocals, bass, and wrote the lyrics.
Bill Steer was, uh, guitar did all the, uh, rhythm and was the main songwriter.
So most of the, uh, the song structure, Michael Amott was guitar lead and harmony parts.
And then you had Ken Owen, uh, on, on drums.
Now the rumors here were, I found a lovely article by Malcolm Dome, who off of, um, Metal
Hammer, uh, who, he, so again, uh, uh, back in the day, that's where you would find Malcolm
Dome would, he would, he would know stuff.
Yeah.
Tell you what was going on.
Um, the rumor was it was a hundred pounds, they were paying a hundred pounds a day, studio
time.
So that, uh, that, that five days they spent like faffing about, yeah, faffing about, yeah,
500 quid, which back then would have been a load of cash.
Um, you know, uh, interestingly, Carcass were considering firing Colin Richardson during
pre-production because they couldn't find the right guitar and eventually stuck with
it.
Uh, being in a band and understanding that you get so inside the thing, I can see that.
I can see how that would have happened.
Yeah.
Like on a total human level.
Yeah.
That chat, that conversation is like, we can't get the guitar to maybe we need to find someone
else.
I can't get my guitar tone, right.
It's your fault.
That's what it is.
Yeah.
No, it's still, it's not arriving.
We've not got the right person for the job.
Honestly, you know, these conversations sometimes, uh, you know, you, you constantly, you, you're
constantly analyzing every little bit of the thing you do when you're in a band.
And it's interesting that you, you know, it's that they would have had that conversation.
That's quite fascinating.
That actually.
I like that.
I like the fact that it's my, it's his fault.
Yeah.
It's his fault.
I can't get my guitar to sound away.
Um, and I'm sure Bill Steer did not do that because he's lovely.
Yeah.
Um, yeah.
Uh, the cover, we talked about this, the cover art being, uh, HR Geiger.
It was a sculpture.
Yeah.
So it was actually a sculpture.
It's a, it's based on a sculpture that it's called life support, uh, which, uh, is a biomechanical
heart.
Nice.
Which I like that.
And their latest album, torn arteries, I've got a t-shirt of that and it's a heart made
up of vegetables.
Right.
Yeah.
And I always like that.
They're very famously vegetarian, the band.
And, uh, I, yeah, I very much, uh, enjoy that t-shirt and the album as well.
Literally what I have on vinyl, which I bought on the date came out.
I'm very excited about that too.
We've never gone out of our way to be extreme just for the sake of it.
Um, so I think as we grow up and mature, we're just, um, I mean, it's, it's just going
to get a bit far more removed from our roots.
If it is offensive, I mean, it's offensive towards everyone rather than being selective
and just picking, you know, one particular group, you know, be it women, a certain race
or whatever, I mean, you know, it's about death, which is something that happens to everyone.
So really, um, as far as being offensive goes, I mean, I think, you know, you're either offended
or you're not.
I talked again, recorded at past studios.
I'm going to quickly run through the albums that have been recorded that we talked about
a little bit already, but, um, so heart work was done there.
This album, Coldplay did Parachutes and Rush of Blood to the Head, Elbow did Asleep in the
Back, Stereophonics Performance and Cocktails, Black Sabbath did Forbidden, The Coral did
The Coral, Doves did Lost Souls, Paolo Nuttini did Sunny Side Up.
Is that one where he's the wrong shoes?
Is that one with the shoes?
Not sure.
I don't know much about Paolo.
Yeah.
Uh, Echo and the Bunnymen did Siberia and Take That did Progress.
Yeah.
Uh, so loads and loads and loads of stuff there, which is interesting.
Um, Colin Richardson, we talked about, he, uh, produced it.
Other albums he produced.
Napalm Death's Harmony Corruption, which is brilliant.
Voltrowers, The Fourth Crusade, which is brilliant.
Cannibal Corpse, The Bleeding, which is brilliant.
Machine Heads, Burn My Eyes, which is brilliant.
And Fear Fractors, Demanufacture, which is brilliant.
Yeah, that was the one for me, but that, that, that's from out of nowhere, that is.
Because all the rest, aren't all the rest English?
Yeah.
And then, but the book-
Oh, Machine Head and not.
Oh no, of course, Machine Head, sorry.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Which is the one with Davidian on it?
Is that, that album?
Yes, Burn My Eyes, I think.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
A, A, A, Mental, that is, that, that, there's 1990 to 1995.
Yeah, yeah.
Um, but I'd take, I, yeah, if I had to go and pick, like, five records to never listen to
anything else again, I'll take those five, thank you very much, which is just absolutely
bonkers.
Um, when Heartwork was released in October 1993, um, uh, it peaked at number 54 in the UK
top 100, which is, like, unheard of back then for an album like this.
Um, in the US it was released through Columbia.
Yeah, again, it didn't break into the Billboard 200, um, sold 81,000 units, according to Wikipedia.
Um, so, I mean, not, like, no one's making millions off this.
And I think this is part of, um, uh, Jeff Walker's comments, right, that, you know, extreme
metal bands today can be, like, mega popular, like, archenemy are enormous.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Um, but back then that just isn't, uh, isn't the way that it was.
Um, it's since been, uh, recognized as one of the most influential albums of all time.
Um, it was inducted into Decibel Magazine's Hall of Fame.
Yeah.
Ranked in Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Metal Albums.
Yeah.
Uh, Metal Hammer called it the defining statement of melodic death metal, which we've established
doesn't exist.
Yeah.
Uh, and, um, yeah, the song Carnal Forge, there's a band called Carnal Forge.
Um, Chuck Schuldner of Death, another one of my favorites, actually.
Death are an exquisite band.
Um, uh, yeah, it talks about Bill Steer's guitar work as being, uh, the magic that is rarely
heard anymore.
Yeah, yeah.
Um, other albums released in the same year, In Utero by Nirvana.
I was going to say, it's a big grunge here, isn't it?
Siamese Dream by The Slash of Pumpkins.
Oh, wow, right, yeah.
Chaos AD by Sepulterra.
Okay, yeah.
Uh, Wolverine Blues by Entombed.
I love Entombed's two albums before.
They did, um, uh, Left Hand Path and Clandestine.
Yeah.
I love those two records.
By Wolverine Blues.
I'd gone off them a bit.
Soul Destruction by Almighty, which we've already covered.
Yeah, of course.
As part of this, which is brilliant.
Bloody Kisses by Typo Negative.
Mm.
Uh, Pork Soda by Primus.
Wow.
Um, Gentleman by The Afghan Wigs and Versus by Pearl Jam.
Versus?
Okay.
So, not much in the, you know what I mean?
Yeah.
It would be very easy to not even know that this scene existed.
Yes.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like, absolutely at all.
Yeah.
Um.
Because all of that, that's all, that's all old rock.
Yeah.
Very American.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it's interesting.
Um, Heartwork spawned several singles.
So, Heartwork was the, the big single.
Mm.
Um, and then there were some non-album tracks.
This Is Your Life and Rotten Roll, uh, which, which, uh, got released, which were, which were
pretty cool.
Um, the, the single, they, they kind of had this, like, the, the album, the video was super
weird where they had to look almost like a, uh, like a physical embodiment of the HR Geiger
cover.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Which, uh, which I always thought was quite cool.
Yeah.
Um, the lyrics are really interesting as well on this.
So, um, the lyrics are kind of, they're, they're, they're metaphorical pretty much.
Yeah.
So there's lots of using, um, like surgical language to describe, like, like normal life
stuff, uh, which is really interesting.
If you dig into the, um, the kind of meaning behind the songs, again, Jeff Walker's talked
about this a lot in, in interviews and stuff, but I think it's really interesting the way
they, they use lyrics, the way they use language.
We were heavily into death metal originally, and, uh, the lyrics were just so generic and
misogynist and, uh, homophobic and everything about it, it just stank of, you know, cliches
to do with heavy metal, you know, about killing women or raping women or whatever.
And basically we wanted to put a more sort of, uh, realistic, which is bound to make it
more brutal or more horrible, uh, tinge to everything or, uh, look at it from a more sort
of, uh, humanistic point of view, I mean, rather than singing about these things that
just don't, don't exist, like zombies or the occult or Satan, you know, these things that
just are not tangible, just not there, we, we, uh, base our lyrics more in reality, and,
uh, I think our lyrics go hand in hand with the music originally, because our music was horrible,
our lyrics were horrible, and our imagery was horrible, the sleeves.
Uh, now, um, like I said earlier, we've created our own style, and what, what we're trying
to do now, we're trying to make, um, it's adult orientated, uh, rock music really, we're
not writing, you know, lyrics for 14 year old kids or whatever, you know, we're not singing
about, uh, going to see the latest horror film, and, uh, you know, uh, just singing about what's
going on in that film, we're, uh, treating it in a more sort of, uh, articulate and literary
sense in the way that, you know, Edgar Allan Poe might have wrote a macabre novel or whatever,
you know, we're looking at it more from a sort of, uh, from the point of view of it
being artwork, as opposed to just two-dimensional, you know, lyrics and music.
Uh, they're not talking about stuff that is, um, like, made up, it's not talking about kind
of goblins and ghouls and fairies and dragons, and, and, or, you know, the, uh, like, Satan
and all of this stuff, it's, it's, yeah, it's, it's...
It's real issues.
Yeah, I mean, kind of wrapped up in some, some, like, weird medical stuff, which, yeah,
which gets a bit less as they go, well, I say a bit less as they go through, um, yeah, it's,
it's, it's interesting, I think, the way, the way it kind of...
So weave it in there.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's, yeah.
I always find it fascinating, absolutely fascinating, the, the way the band do that, and the way
the, the lyrics, the way they, um, kind of wind, though, these, like, medical terminology, but,
but it's about, you know, feeling lost, or it's about, you know, not being connected to
something, which I think is quite cool.
Yeah.
Um, um, oh, crikey, where did I get to with my things?
Oh, yeah, so, um, the official tour began in October 93, so they kind of went straight out
on, on tour, uh, they covered the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan, um, they
did a, I think the video was done at a place called Stacks Nightclub, um, interestingly,
the live guitar work was a guy called Mike Hickey.
Right, right.
Michael Amott never toured, never played live.
Wow.
With this album, I think he played on the album before when they did the tour there, but
essentially, he wanted his own thing, so he went off and formed Arch Enemy.
Yep.
Um, and I think that first Arch Enemy record, if you, if you really like Carcass.
Yeah.
Um, and that first Arch Enemy record, it, for me, it's got such a natural.
Yeah, it sort of eases into it.
Evolution, you can feel the tree branch bending a little bit for that, but it was very much,
uh, yeah, you can, you can, you can kind of see where they're, where, where they're going
to go, which I think is really, really cool.
Um, the tours were with, um, like, Body Count, Head Swim, Napalm Death, Death, uh, Cannibal
Corpse, um, there were 40 dates in the show.
Right.
In the tour, which, I mean, for an extreme metal band is, it's a big, big tour.
Yeah, it's bonkers.
I always get the impression that they're proper grafters though.
They're always playing, aren't they?
They're really, really graft.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
They're permanently playing.
Yeah.
And even after the comeback, they played these tiny gigs.
They were doing loads of support slots and then steadily, steadily, steadily, you know,
where there were, um, yeah, they're now getting some quite, quite big, um, quite big slots,
I think, which is, which is quite cool.
Um, influences, uh, the band talk about being influenced by Iron Maiden and Judas Priest and Megadeth
and Slayer and that kind of stuff.
Um, but it's the bands that they influence.
So when you talk about, uh, uh, you know, that, I guess the genealogy of this stuff, uh,
obviously, the metal tree.
Yeah.
The metal tree.
You've got an arch enemy, uh, who, uh, you know, quite clearly, you know, uh, Michael was
influenced hugely by this.
Well, and I think Carcass were influenced by Michael.
Yes.
I think, um, I mentioned this earlier.
I'd love to have that conversation with Bill Steer about, you know, did, did, was it
Mike Michael's melodic guitar playing that influenced Bill or Bill's that influenced Michael or was
it a bit of both or, you know, because it's almost like they gave each other permission
to explore that in some way.
It's, yeah, yeah, absolutely excellent.
I think.
Um, but then you had things like that.
There are lots of bands say that they were, you know, uh, influenced by Carcass, a black
Dahlia murder, Arsis, bring me the horizon as well, which I think is stratosphere, didn't
they?
The last couple of years, my eldest is, um, is, is 15, uh, the end of this year.
And he, he adores bring me the horizon, bring me the horizon, sleep token.
Yeah.
Um, I mean, they're your future headliners, aren't they?
He just absolutely loves that.
He lives in a sleep token hoodie at the minute when he's like, bring me the horizon.
I've just done like this low fi album release.
Um, I, I can't stand, I quite like bring me the horizon, but this is just a bit, I don't,
I don't get it.
Um, but he loves it.
So it's just, I can hear it in his room just over and over and over again, which is, which
is pretty cool.
Um, let me go through this five things.
Um, oh, we've covered all of this stuff already.
Oh yeah.
Uh, no, boring.
No, yeah.
No, we've talked about all of that.
Uh, media and television usage.
Nothing from this has been used in media and television.
Shockingly.
Yeah.
Um, reviews.
Everybody gave this like a, everybody's giving this like a, uh, a, a, a, a,
a stunner of a review.
Um, even Rolling Stone ranked it 51st in the hundred greatest metal albums of all time,
which is like, I don't know.
There's a lot of metal albums in the world.
Yeah.
So, um, uh, I'm just skimming down through my list of facts and see, oh, remasters and
reissues.
And this is quite, it's quite good.
This got a, one of my favorite types of remaster where they uncompressed it.
They uncompressed it.
So they, I thought you were going to say Dobbly.
They did.
They put Dobbly on it.
Dobbly.
Um, they, so, uh, they literally uncompressed it.
So they did a bunch of releases called the FDR versions, the full dynamic range.
okay yeah earache did it for a bunch of releases i think entombed uh you can get left hand pass so
that time when that when they switched up the compression of the records yeah they literally
uncompressed it and they did the fdr bones which are quieter yeah you get more dynamic range and
yeah again super cool just for those who are probably questioning what that means it's basically
the the quiets are quieter the louds are louder so the perceived difference between the loud bits
the quiet bits of the record it really takes you on that journey yeah yeah yeah yeah absolutely it's um
it's interesting for me like some you would assume a record like this would be better being more massive
yeah yeah bizarrely the fdr the fdr and a left hand path from entombed is another one that benefits
massively from this just seems to have like more life and more um sort of depth almost yeah it comes
alive it goes from being this kind of like like solid wall of noise to being a little bit of air
and separation in what's happening yeah which i uh particularly like um uh what else was there they
didn't oh yeah so they did uh so i've got a couple of copies of this i've got i've got an original vinyl
copy of this but then i bought i didn't buy it came out on fdr um i didn't rebuy it at that point
but i did rebuy in 2021 the um ultimate edition came out which was this um it was still the fdr
version but it was yeah just i thought it was a nicer version of that so i have that one eric are
very good at reissuing they're getting it right yeah they're constantly i'm very excited because i've
got um the first four prong albums from earache that are marked as july from if anyone who's bought
any records from earache will know that they're very good at reissuing stuff they're very bad at
actually sending you stuff so it'll be there what's called on demand stuff so you buy it and
then they don't say which year it's coming so it'll arrive at some point so i've got i've got
the first four prong albums yeah which i'm like as everyone knows i'm a massive fan of prong and then
um the all of the carcass albums every carcass album in the original artwork all signed all you know
full-on like proper nutjob collectors super fan edition um that's due to be delivered to my house
in july wow so i'm very excited about that and we're in july now so it could come at any time so
for people that like this stuff it's there's still this this i think you can still sign up but they're
weird this stuff is like um it annoys me a little bit so so i mean i i'm a huge fan yes but loads of
people will buy this because they're going to make money on it so it will come out will be i think i
paid i i like proper earliest like as soon as this came to me i bought it i think 160 quid or whatever
yeah they're already up for like 200 and something yeah and this you know give it in a year's time
these will be on ebay for like three four yeah yeah yeah yeah um and it's really i think it's really
frustrating when they do that kind of stuff um anyway it was nice of a direct to reissue them
a lot of the others are not uh they don't always uh there's a lot of love for this album though isn't
there so yeah yeah yeah yeah this one this one's um yeah i was like i've got i've already i've already
got a few copies of this one so yeah i'm excited while we're talking about this actually if anyone's
got a copy of superstar car wash yes by goo goo dolls yeah uh uh 2017 i'd live to talk to you
these messages on x um and i don't want to pay if you think i'm going to like um you know give you a
kidney for it i'm not but and again another one's really frustrating the scalp has just grabbed them
all there weren't hardly any copies of it um and again the last the last one i think sold of that
for like 130 140 quid on discogs yeah it's just nuts very grumpy makes me very grumpy when people do
that doesn't it you i thought scalpers the scalp yeah i know i can definitely get the i can get that
yeah i can i can definitely get that rage for sort of tickets as well for gigs do you know what i feel
i need is that i need a dinosaur to sort that out come and meet my dinosaur early jurassic park
yeah come here vinyl dickhead this is my dinosaur give me the vinyl or my dinosaur will eat you
right anyway that's the end of the facts excellent stuff let's put a tune on
and then we shall uh we should talk about next week do it
so
we
so
, so
we
so
we
so
we
so
we
so
I'm sorry.
The universe demands it.
Yeah.
And there we go.
That's it.
That's just the way it is.
And if you don't like it,
you can write a bit on that website page that I said.
Yeah.
Shout into the void.
The form that you can fill in and it says,
what do we get wrong?
Or what did you not like this week?
And then you press send and then it just leaves it.
I once said when I was a lot younger,
I went away,
I went on leave for two weeks and I put a note at the bottom saying,
you know,
I'm going out for two weeks.
If it's urgent,
you know,
speak to these people.
And if you send me a message in this time,
I'll ignore them in the order they were received when I get back.
And I got very told off.
Did you?
Very unprofessional,
apparently.
Very unprofessional.
Is that professional standards,
Neil?
No.
Well,
I mean,
clearly not.
How would you feel if you got that back in?
I thought,
I think it's really funny.
But no,
I'm not allowed to do that.
And I'm obviously grown up now and I would not recommend that you did that.
Yeah,
no.
But I thought it was quite funny.
And I thought that my manager at the time was having a sense of humour failure.
But there you go.
So,
I've discovered a discrepancy.
Yeah,
yeah,
yeah.
Luckily,
though,
we've discovered the discrepancy before it went out.
What we haven't done is gone back into the podcast and edit the discrepancy.
So,
we're just doing like what the sun do and do a little disclaimer at the end.
You just can't be bothered.
I mean,
just whatever.
It's the small print.
Yeah.
So,
anyway,
we're past studios.
I said that Performance and Cocktails off of the Stereophonics was recorded.
And then I got excited because that's probably one of my favourite Stereophonics albums.
But actually,
it's not that.
It was the other one.
It was.
Word Gets Around.
Now,
and not even all of Word Gets Around was recorded there.
So,
only tracks five and nine off Word Gets Around.
Which ones are they?
Traffic.
Traffic's best one.
And,
the best of the big time.
Yeah,
that's all right as well.
But Traffic's a great song.
It's got Local Boy in the Photograph on it as well.
Now,
I think we should do Performance and Cocktails anyway.
I believe.
I've got,
there's a story about.
That's Rockfield.
Yeah,
yeah.
The desk from that record.
Yeah.
now lives in Nottingham in Confetti.
Oh,
you were talking about this.
I believe.
Yeah,
you were talking about this.
I believe.
Sometimes you get things wrong.
It doesn't matter if it does or not.
Myth is myth,
isn't it?
We'll just start a rumour and that's truth.
I do like the idea that in like 50 years time.
Yeah.
an AI is going to come back and read the transcript for this show
and the nonsense that we talk about,
it will go,
oh,
that's true,
obviously.
Yeah,
yeah,
yeah.
Do you know what I mean?
Yeah.
And be like,
okay.
Yeah.
somebody was doing a thing where they were,
you know,
we do,
we do our daily releases on social media.
We say which albums have been released every day,
right?
Based on our database of facts.
Now we get our facts from all over the place.
We get them from Spotify.
We get them from Wikipedia.
We get them from the RIAA.
We get them from a bunch of different places and I kind of average over them,
right?
So if,
if,
if a few of them agree,
yeah,
I kind of go,
that's probably,
that's probably right.
Yeah.
So anyway,
I saw somebody this week going,
Oh,
you know,
people,
people will be saying that this is the date that this was released and it's not the date that this was released and blah,
blah,
blah.
But what's fascinating about it is they discount the,
the,
the release date that's on Wikipedia as being like,
you know,
what would Wikipedia know?
Yeah.
And it's kind of crowdsourced and obviously that's going to be wrong.
And then they treat as fact,
this scanned image from a written magazine from 1984.
six or whatever.
Yeah.
And you just think,
I,
I'm not sure.
Yeah.
I'm not sure.
I'm not sure that's valid.
That's not necessarily evidence to prove your point.
People can really bent out of shape.
They're proper,
you know,
proper,
I'm going to come and kick you in the nuts.
Actually.
Yeah.
Add a noise.
I mean,
I don't think you're fine.
All of that kind of,
you know.
So if you ever do that on our,
on our social media and you pull one of those on us,
basically you need to know that we're going to do that voice.
Yeah.
I'm going to send each other a voice note with that voice.
If you're saying that,
that's actually,
do you know that actually?
Yes.
Don't do that.
You know what?
If somebody posts an album release on a day and you know it's the wrong day.
Yeah.
Just go and listen to the album.
It's just a reminder.
Do you know what?
Go and listen to it.
Just go and listen to it then.
Yeah.
Don't get upset about it.
If you care that much about it,
go and have a go at it.
Go and get yourself like a cup of tea.
Some fruit pastels or red and black fruit pastels.
Maybe a Coke Zero as we do each week.
Just go and get yourself something that you like.
Listen to the album and just think it's brilliant.
Yeah.
And then go about your day.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
That's it.
And whatever you do not,
do not ever comment back and say,
I think you're fine.
And the other thing I wish,
do you know,
I wish someone had told me a long time ago,
the fact that somebody's wrong on the internet.
Yeah.
Doesn't matter.
No one,
it doesn't matter.
Doesn't matter.
People are wrong all day,
every day.
It doesn't matter.
And it's not your job.
I mean,
it's like,
it's not your job to fix that.
Yeah.
To be police.
It's not.
Go in your garden.
Just watch telly.
Stroke your cat.
Take your dog for a walk.
Buy a chocolate bar.
Yeah.
That's it.
Go on to Earrake and buy some records.
Listen to some records.
Yeah.
Do you know what I mean?
Yeah.
That's a nice one,
isn't it?
Yeah.
Whenever you're tempted to put an opinion.
Yeah.
Or disagree with someone online.
Just remember.
Just put some music on.
Remember what happened in Jurassic Park.
All the dickheads get eaten.
That's all I'm saying.
And you never know,
do you?
You don't know.
You never know.
While you're there bashing away.
I think you'll find that's it.
The T-Rex comes.
It's in.
You'll be there on the toilet.
You should watch your glass of water.
Watch it shaking.
You'll be on the toilet.
Oh no, I'm being a dickhead.
What's that sound?
It's T-Rex.
Uh oh.
And then you have to go,
am I being a dickhead?
Yeah, that's it.
There we go.
If you, yeah.
You have that constant sense of the water meter.
The water meter.
Does it do that vibrating thing
when the T-Rex is coming?
Do you know my friend,
I was talking to a colleague this week
and I used the term dickhead.
Yeah.
And he was like,
that doesn't translate very well.
We don't do that a lot in the US.
We've got many other words to use.
I think dickhead came from Jasper Carrot.
Did it, really?
From Birmingham.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
To that, like for us,
this is like a normal thing to call,
you call your mates a dickhead.
Yeah, yeah.
It's kind of,
it's a classic British abuse term.
Yeah, but it's got a little bit of affection.
It's used to your best mates
and people that you dislike.
And there's no real way to tell.
And that's why we like it.
It's kind of like,
you know,
are you being friendly or abusive?
I'm not really sure.
You decide.
Yeah.
But yeah,
so that's,
that's just the way we roll.
Yeah.
And if anybody gets offended by that,
I'm sending my dinosaur.
Yeah, yeah.
Don't offend.
Don't get offended.
Yeah, don't report us to.
I don't know who you,
who do you report a podcast to?
Podcast police.
I don't know.
There's nobody, is there?
It's wild rest, this place.
One of the,
one of the presenters said dickhead
and I'm offended.
Just don't do that.
It's not aimed at you.
Just put another one on.
Just, there's loads of podcasts
that don't say that.
It's not aimed at you.
No.
If you think it is aimed at you,
it, it, I mean,
go and watch Jurassic Park.
But mostly it probably isn't.
No, absolutely.
Everybody,
certainly everybody I communicate with,
except for people that talk about
album release dates are lovely.
Is that it?
Yeah, so just to clarify what we're doing next,
we're not doing performance cocktails next week.
Can we do that?
I want to do performance cocktails.
Oh, we're doing that then?
Why not?
Do the thing.
Oh, the key.
Yeah, do the,
have you got something you can?
Yeah, we'll do the key,
which we found out wasn't biased last week.
Statistically significant.
A statistically significant analysis
of one thrown in the air.
Right, I'm going to shake it up a bit.
Which is which?
Heads up.
You decide.
So text up is performance and cocktails.
Yeah, I'm shuffling it
like you would have a deck of cards.
Shuffling the key.
All right, here we go.
Yay!
Performance and cocktails.
Job done.
We're done.
Done, that's it.
So we are done.
If you are thinking of reporting us for abuse,
I mean, you can do if you want.
I wonder if it's like,
you know,
like when the PMRC put a sticker on the front.
Oh, yes.
And then everyone went and bought it.
Yeah, because you have to do that for us.
Yeah, it's fine.
Just share it and say,
don't listen to this
because they use naughty words
that we don't understand.
It's nice.
He's saying Dickhead swearing.
I don't know really.
If you said it in,
if one of your students said it in a classroom,
you'd be like,
you'd give him a scowl.
Yeah, yeah.
But would you be like,
no, you've got to go home.
Is it, where's the borderline?
I don't want to speak
because I've got a very unique way
of working in a classroom.
Anyway, yeah.
Yeah.
And if you've seen the new Jurassic Park movie
and it was great,
tell me.
Yeah.
Because I'd love to,
I really want to go and see it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Or if you've seen 28 years,
we've not talked about movies,
but if you've seen 28 years later,
I love that franchise.
I absolutely adore it.
28 days later,
28 weeks later.
Yes.
And now 28 years,
it's all shot on iPhone.
Mm.
And I'm so excited to go and see it.
Mm.
So if you've seen it.
Yeah.
You'll find us on,
X is probably the best place to get us.
Or Blue Sky,
or Threads now.
Threads, yeah.
We've done Threads.
Yeah.
And on Meta Facebook said,
we were,
we were a rising creator this week.
Rising creator.
Don't know what that means.
Rising creator.
Literally,
they wrote to us and said,
you are a rising creator.
But there's no context around it.
No, no.
I don't know what that means.
We'll take it.
It's fine.
Oh, I don't know what that means.
It's absolutely fine.
Anyway,
and if you've got any ideas for albums
you think we should do next.
Yep.
Send them in.
Send them in
and we'll ignore them
in the order they were.
Genuinely,
nearly all of the stuff that we do
people have sent us in.
Like the Mannix we did
for Lindsay.
Yep.
I bet she's not going to listen to this week.
No, she's not a big fan of Extreme Metal,
is she?
No, no.
It's not her bag.
Yeah, good.
I think we're done.
Done.
See you next week.
It's all right.