Carcass - Flesh Ripping Sonic Torment

This was the first demo under the Carcass name. I was interested to see how the demo was and how it compared to Reek of Putrefaction in terms of the sound and the audio quality. I was quite surprised, but in a rather pleasant way.

The vocalist, Sanjiv, doesn't sound pitchshifted. He has a fairly solid guttural, and delivers vocals passably well. I was surprised by the straight-up gutturals here, expecting the pitchshifted vocals, but this sounds to be tape-recorder quality, and (in my experience) pitchshifting on that low-grade of equipment doesn't turn out so good.

The drums are fairly standard as well, blasting away indecipherably. It's almost impossible to distinguish the riffs over the drums and vocals, giving the album something of a powerviolence feel. It's free of the ridiculous powerviolence vocals, though, which is a big plus. It sounds a bit like Denak, in my opinion, but with worse production and better vocals.

If you're into really indecipherable brutal grindcore, this is a solid album. A must-have for grind fans and those who enjoy demos. It's impressive how much this band changed, even if the changes went downhill.