Surgical Steel is Carcass' big comeback record, 18 years after their original death rattle - Swansong - in 1995. This was a big noise when it first came out, due to the high profile of the comeback, but my ears were elsewhere, as being an elitist goregrind-loving asshat I had written anything post-Necroticism off as widdly death metal shite. To be fair, I'm still completely 100% right, but I've stopped being such a dick about it; Carcass are a fantastically talented band and one of the best in metal - I just need to accept I don't particularly love the majority of their back catalogue.
It is with great surprise then, that I find 2013's Surgical Steel incredibly listenable. As soon as I stop mentally comparing it to Symphonies Of Sickness, it becomes something so much more. Don't get me wrong, the production is a bit too close to Arch Enemy for me (even now with the absence of Amott), but Surgical Steel hits hard. "Thrasher's Abattoir" is the first track proper, a 1:50 blast through top quality Jeff Walker squawks and cheeky blastbeats, and I cannot fucking argue with that. Other standout tracks for me are the ridiculously titled "The Master Butcher's Apron", with it's flurry of blasting madness, and the equally silly "The Granulating Dark Satanic Mills", with it's bizarre chorus of chanted numbers, which according to fans on YouTube, is an ID code for "extracellular solute-binding protein". So yeah, that explains that.
Carcass may not be the same band that made some of my all time favourite records anymore, but this is an incredibly solid metal record and I would recommend it heartily to mainstream fans looking to explore into the dark side of metal a bit....
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