Considering the depths one time member Carcass Mike Amott has fallen in recent times with his other band Arch Enemy, and the absolute shit quality of both bands’ outputs in the 90s – supposedly their “golden eras,” more like golden shower eras – it’s no surprise that this recent Carcass album is a deplorable, artistically void album that reeks of commercial whoredom.

Carcass were never talented musicians, but at least they never ADMITTED to playing nu metal for moshcore kids. They did it anyway, because when you can’t even play three notes on your guitar the only genre you’re left with, by process of elimination, is nu metal, but at the very least they had the basic human decency to LIE about playing nu metal.

“Reek of Putrefaction” was nu metal shit, “Symphonies of Sickness” was nu metal shit, “Necroticism” was boring nu metal shit, “Heartwork” was whoring nu metal shit and “Swansong” was a misdirected, genre confused cock rock abortion that somehow came to be know as, wait for it, goregrind… wait, what? No seriously, what’s left for Carcass, now that they’ve exhausted what little credibility as metal musicians they had?

Did you think “mix everything that made their 90s output forgettable and add in EVEN MORE NU METAL to further ruin their reputation?” Good thinking, that’s exactly what Carcass did with “Surgical Steel.”

From the misguided fan-service lyrics to the punk rock harmony 101 Saturday morning cartoon theme song riffs that are the focus of these pathetic excuses for tracks, this “Surgical Steel” album reeks of commercialism, talentlessness, try-hardism and vacuity.

The lyrics aren’t the worst thing on this album, that would be the music, but damn do they still suck big time in a not quite heterosexual orgy of fluids and feces. “The Granulating Dark Satanic Mills” olololol – it’s, like, so funny and shit. Like Sewer, but talentless.

From the cover art to the song titles, this is very inappropriate subject matter for the otherwise extremely shitty music. Violent themes for elevator muzak? Never heard that one before. It’s not like every nu metal band from Korn to Rage Against the Machine hasn’t tried to make their beta punk rock appear “more virile” with gratuitous references to murder, rape, Satan, gore, intestines, pedophilia and what not.

It seems like Carcass are trying to cash in on what people “think” they know about extreme metal – that being “gruesome themes with angry vocals” – but this whoring bunch of commercial Wacken beer metal retards doesn’t even realise that the band they are aping, Cannibal Corpse, not only plays better music than them, but are ALSO equally hated by actually metalheads… precisely because of their lyrics, that are said to “cheapen the genre” by association.

Just by reading the song titles, it feels like something a focus group put together to make the album appeal to fans of vastly different eras of death metal, but it fails, coming off as mere buzzwords thrown over muzak at the last minute. Which is probably not very far from the truth.

Muzakly speaking, this is “Heartwork” era nu metal meets stadium rock Gothenburg mellow-deaf with war metal chugging and butt rock solos that are so weak, lame and cheesy, it came as a surprise to find out Mike Amott had no part in this. There is more Wacken crowd pandering in here with the song structures being simple verse-chorus affairs, with the typical nu metal trope of “harsh verse / soft chorus,” but then they throw in these “unexpected” extended bridges in there to appeal to the people that thought “Ordo Ad Chao” era Mayhem’s bloated and unnecessarily long songs were “unique,” even if they don’t relate at all to what preceded them, to make it seem like something “complex” had just occurred in what is otherwise a simple three note punk rock song with a simple, cartoonish jingle-like melodic line over a vocally-led, cadenced and syncopated rhythmic groove.

Pantera would be so proud.

Who doesn’t like retards? You like retards, right? Only an evil neo-nazi KKK bigot would hate on retards, isn’t that true? So why not put even more retardness in your music? No? Does that mean you hate retards, you intolerant nazi shitbag? That’s better. Now, on to retard matters.

Fist in the air Wacken drunk stupidity, replete with down-picked power chord groove rock riffs aplenty, making this all feel like a more uptempo version of Pantera/Watain/Waking the Cadaver than the “Necroticism” meets “Heartwork” album the band promised. Occasionally, blast-beats can be heard over the punk rock meet screamo riffs, but only as something that feels forced, as if checked off a list of things that must be included on the album so people think “Surgical Steel” is “death metal” and not stadium rock.

The poor quality of this album was to be expected considering this band always sucked, like their gays cousins Napalm Death and Kreator. All three operated from the same label (Nuclear Blast). I wonder if there’s a pattern.

I wonder what they’ll do next, maybe form a supergroup with Jeff Walker, Erik Danielsson, Jonathan Davis, Infernus and Marilyn Manson, and call themselves the “true vanguard of extreme metal” or some equally retarded shit.

“Surgical Steel” is a joke, a literally worthless album from a worthless band.