Forensic Fugues and Medicolegal Medleys

Going on record regarding themselves as early Carcass worship, The County Medical Examiners show themselves to be much more than that. When comparing this piece of work to Carcass's debut, "Reek of Putrefaction", it would seem that the student has become the master. A bold assertion perhaps, but while paling in comparison in some aspects to the aforementioned album, mainly vocally (more on that later), the overall abstract form of emotion and pure kickassery of this album surely outweighs that of Carcass's debut at the very least.

I tend to start these reviews off by talking about the tones of the collective instruments, which in regards to this album holds a very pivotal role in my enjoyment of it. The guitar tone specifically isn't really anything special, though that may be for the better. The gritty and grinding tone of the guitars on the album serve as a good reminder and nod to its predecessors, sounding something straight out of some compilation of Carcass, General Surgery, and Impaled songs. The fact of the matter is, there was no need to experiment in tonality because The County Medical Examiners only wish to serve as a modern worship of Goregrind gods, and so by sticking to a formula they were already ahead of the curve.

The drums have a rather clean tone to them actually, which allows the cymbals on the kit in particular to stand out despite the kit itself being somewhat drowned out among the chaos. I've personally never been a fan of the egregious overuse of the blast beat, but I will say that despite it not being used very sparingly on this record, the choppy production lends a hand in that, when the blast beat does occur, it being drowned out actually just lets it build onto the chaos spotlighted on the guitars, rather than taking the show for itself. I may sound as if I'm being a little harsh to the drums, but they are actually one of the stronger pieces of the record. Apart from the articulate speed of one Dr. Jack Putnam, he also serves to give a fruitful and punchy beat for these 30 minutes of sickness and disease. There are a good share of memorable moments on the kit, from the opening drum line of "Medicocriminal Entomology", to the gallop-like beat and sharp use of the snare on the second half of "Epicedium For Epidermal Slippage", to the calming groove in the first minute of "Algor Mortis", To the intensive use of the ride followed by what I assume to be some double-kick action in the second half of "Livor Mortis", this album is action packed with a wide range of drum beats that might go overlooked in favor of the guitars.

As far as the guitars go, it's difficult to pin down an initial talking point. With the amount of variety there is from track to track I suppose the easiest thing to do would be to examine some of the riffs, because in a lot of ways this album feels like a goregrind riff compilation, and I mean that wholeheartedly as a compliment. The record has a couple of types of riffs commonly found throughout its duration, "riff genres" if you will. Firstly, they have those aggressively quick and chaotic tremolo riffs, as seen at the beginning of "Putrescine & Cadaverine", and at various points on "Livor Mortis". Secondly, theres riffs that are chalk full of power chord sliding, such as on "Organ Harvest" and "Rigor Mortis". Additionally, there are numerous riffs that are essentially just power chord chugging, like in the second half of "Livor Mortis", and similarly there are many slower paced riffs that just jump around the fret board playing power chords, most notably at the beginning of the opening track, "Autopsy Suite". Now I just gave specific examples of each riff in action, but I could've picked almost any song on here and assigned it to one of these riffs, becuase TCME is so resourceful to where they use just about all of these riff variations in each track. In fact, TCME often has hybrid riffs between these "riff genres" just lying around the LP, and this is why the guitar work is probably whats most beautiful about this album. The ability to seamlessly jump from tempo to tempo while still sounding disgusting is something not lost on me from this record.

Guitar wise the album is certainly a lot more "rhythm" than "lead", and yet it's solos, if you can even call them that, have a memorable impact on the listener despite their extremely limited capacity. I am of course talking about what is probably my favorite moment on the entire album, the solo near the end of "Organ Harvest", which plays over one of the better riffs of the album as well, a mixture between the power chord chugging and power chord sliding riffs that I mentioned earlier. I find the guitar tone used for the "solo" to be amazing, as it almost sounds like a violin, and yet it maintains the putrid flow of the album. This shy guitar rears its head once more to close out "Y-Shaped Thoracoabdominal Incision", in a solo that personally brings me back to Carcass's "Incarnated Solvent Abuse".

Unfortunately the bass on this record is extremely difficult to pick out, and it is probably my biggest critique of the album as a whole. I know that I'm generally a stickler for bands not reaching an obscure and arbitrary bass quota I keep somewhere in my head, but despite this I actually don't really feel the need to "dock points" for the album based on how non-existent the bass seems to be on this release, as it doesn't take away at all from my enjoyment of the record. With the direction that the album goes in, i would be seemingly difficult or even out of place to inject the type of Cryptopsy-esque bass presence that I tend to enjoy when I listen to metal. Overall, though the bass does next to nothing on the album, its not worth missing and doesn't have really any adverse effect on the album as a whole.

While I certainly wouldn't blame you for missing a few of the lyrics from track to track, TCME do certainly come at you with some classic goregrind medical textbook vocabulary that is rather interesting at times when you look into it. In fact, the apparent absurdity, or even the outright disgusting aspect of the lyrical themes seem to strike my funny bone just right, while maintaining some very interesting information from time to time. My favorite of the lyrical themes comes in the opening track, Autopsy suite, where TCME revel in their "beloved autopsy ward", home of the grotesque stories in which they are soon to indulge the listener with. They go into great detail on the anal behavior of maintaining the sterile environment necessary for their occupation. The author is both proud and in love in a sense, noting the exclusivity of the autopsy ward, with the line "Kept under lock and key, available only to us morbid scientists…", and going out of their way to note some of what a normal person would probably consider rather mundane features of the ward, such as the autopsy tables being "set at regulation height to avoid unnecessary strain". The ward has everything our doctors need to carry out their work, and they find solace in the "Cabinet space…for microbiological supplies", the "Medical twine…for the closure stitches I tie", and probably everyone's favorite, the "Bone saw whine…a postmortem lullaby".

I find the admiration of the sterile field of the autopsy ward to be delightfully ironic when, in the very next song (Medicocriminal Entomology), the examiners give a horrifying though funny recount of a body so full of bugs, that the autopsy technicians "mistake the corpse shudder for a cadaveric spasm". Festering and completely overrun, the body is described as alive, being "reanimated through entomological means". The rest of the song essentially serves as a job description for a Forensic Entomologist, detailing the different roles their bug knowledge plays in a standard autopsy. Now of course the entire album can't be this thought out lyrically, as Epicedium for Epidermal Slippage scratches that itch for the standard gore-filled imagery that fans of the genre are mostly accustomed to. The Rigor, Algor, and Livor Mortis tracks give some rather haunting imagery of the changes a body goes through as it transforms into its corpse. From Rigor's description of the "revolting cracks" that come from bending the stiffened limbs, to Algor's admittedly hilarious description of the "ferocious anal probing" done to determine the body temperature of the corpse, and even Livor's touching description of a corpse as "marinating meat", this trilogy of tracks highlights all three aspects of the album's lyrics: gore, humor, and medically accurate descriptions. As much as I would like to go into each track and dissect it lyrically, I understand that the lyrics are far from the main takeaway of the album and I lastly move on to the vocals themselves.

If you were to put either of the vocalists on this record by themselves, I probably would've spent a good bit of this review saying how bad they are, and yet, somehow they work off of each other in a beautifully disgusting manner. The vocals are truly diarrhea in motion, in the most gruesome and enjoyable way. It's honestly comedic at times, as the gurgling vocals instantly made me draw parallels to gorenoise, as if the county medical examiners were something obscure like proto-gorenoise. Seriously, the gutturals can hit like a fish tank filter at times. In some cruel twist, the pairing of shrill, golem-like vocals with vocals that come off like a more brutal iteration of Lasse Pyykkö from Acid Witch make for a tremendous pairing as the audience is treated to 30 minutes of reading from a medical textbook. Now I'll be the first to admit that the dual vocals don't deviate much, but in essence they still get the job done to say the least. Most notably, the hilariously entertaining guttural competition at the start of Algor Mortis is easily one of the better and more memorable moments of the album.

The album has countless highlights, and like the ideal woman it has an almost flawless midsection. The entire stretch from the fourth track, Epicedium For Epidermal Slippage, to the ninth track, Livor Mortis, is pure vile poetry in its entirety, and is enough to make even the sanest of men go mad with ecstasy. The Rigor, Algor, and Livor Mortis songs which I've dubbed "the decomp trilogy" would be an easy 100% for me if they were apart of their own EP, as they serve as a gnarly and medically accurate description of the happenings of our bodies once we inevitably kick the bucket. Grim as that section, as well as the majority of this album may seem, this is actually an extremely fun listen, being disgusting yet groovy, haunting yet funny, and entirely, gruesome.

What can I say, except THIS IS TCME. Amazingly low, almost burped growls more like the lower version of Bill Steer (and the only vocalist to ever touch the Carcass-God-of-Low's style in my opinion) paired in a sonic attack with the highest throaty gurgles you'll ever hear, both delivering the most complicated and medically accurate information about forensics and autopsies. This is true goregrind, none of that sloppy intestines, maggots and faeces muck (only Repulsion and "Reek of Putrefaction" pulled this off, srsly) - they spent time on these lyrics. Time and effort.

Musically, think a re-arranged version of "Reek" + "Symphonies of Sickness", with a new sound based off the old sound. The guitar is more distorted and the bass is cleaner, the (obvious) drum machine is set a bit too far back in the mixing, and the burping vocals placed sickeningly in the foreground. Expect grind, groove and guts - oh, so much guts. I haven't seen artwork as artistically repulsive like this since I opened Reek for the first time (bloody censored cover...). Collages galore.

It is quite short (but long enough) at just under half an hour - although this passes a lot quicker for me. I usually can't wait to get to the burp-conflict at the start of the track "Algor Mortis: The Linear Rate Of Cadaveric Cooling", which was coincidentally featured on their "Fetid Putrescent Whiffs" demo (2001). This song is quite obviously influenced by "Ruptured in Purulence" from "Symphonies..." but you don't mind, the sound is so different you simply get the feeling you're listening to one of the best goregrind bands since Carcass.

Of course, the undeniable tribute factor plays a major part in the album, calling in on Reek's nostalgia value for replayability. Ignoring the blatant song rip-offs (which is acceptable, since they are an open tribute band) and the demo-like production, this album is a worthy predecessor of the significantly superiour Olidous Operettas. If you're a new listener, try this one out first, the second will sound even better in comparison. If you hear that one first, there's a high chance this one will seem unbearably primitive.

(My biggest nitpick is the lack of "The Standard Anatomical Position" re-recording, but no points off for that. Okay, maybe one.)

The County Medical Examiners serve up some good grind on their first album, but if you're looking for something groundbreaking, go look elsewhere. You won’t find anything that’s new, and that’s what The County Medical Examiners want. This is pure Carcass-worship, and they do not claim to be otherwise.

For the rest of us, however, the band offers up a slight twist from the original Carcass formula presented on Symphonies of Sickness and Reek of Putrefaction, but it isn’t much. The production is much better than both those releases, although it doesn’t make them a better band. The problem is, the songs aren’t memorable at all. On subsequent listens, the album lost some of its fun minimalist charm. The Examiners probably didn’t have longevity in mind while recording this.

The instruments are played well, and the whole album has a Reek of Putrefaction feel to it. The biggest difference, once again, is the production. Other than that, songs have a tendency to blend into each other, which is never a good thing. The songs are kept short, so it’s over before it can get boring; a smart decision by the doctors-to-be.

In the vocal department gurgles pervade the album. The range is the standard goregrind formula, ranging from the low gurgled growl to the high scream, like that of Exhumed, Ghoul, or Impaled. Double tracking makes the album seem more like a re-mastered Reek of Putrefaction than a release from a totally different band. If this is what you like or the blatant rip-off doesn’t bother you, you’ve come to the right place.

Hopefully there will be some more innovation and deviation from the set-in-stone goregrind formula in future albums, but my hopes are not getting high.

If you enjoy this release, then try to track down their split with General Surgery.