Well, Chris Reifert and co. are still at it and back with album number 9, their fourth (depending on what you view the 2015 Skull Grinder LP) after returning from an extended hiatus with Macabre Eternal in 2011, an OK if an underwhelming return to the fray. But then we got 2013s The Headless Ritual and 2014s Tourniquets, Hacksaws and Graves. Two excellent releases that saw the band truly back.

So what can we expect from Autopsy in 2022, now with another new bass player (and producer) in Greg Wilkinson (Static Abyss, Brainoil, Deathgrave, ex Graves at Sea)? Well, more Autopsy is what you get. Nothing more nothing less.

Even with Wilkinson’s thinner, less sloppy, less moist production, it’s what you have come to know and love about Autopsy. Miasmal, viscous death metal with ample chunks of punky blasts and more importantly, oodles of the scrawling, oozy bits that the band has perfected over the years. You get about half of each on the album 41-minute runtime.

Personally, it’s the icky, doomy songs and parts that make Autopsy what they are, and the songs that either feature or completely deliver on that component are the standouts; i.e start of  “Final Frost”, sickly, grooving “The Voracious One”, “Tapestry of Scars”, classic sounding “Skin by Skin”, “Slaughterer of Souls”, personal favorite  “Your Eyes Will Turn to Dust”  and other moments are by far the album’s best cuts imbuing classic “In the Grip Dead of Winter” vibes.

But there are plenty of the feral blasting numbers and meaty sways like the opener “Stab the Brain” and start of  “Knife, Slice, Axe, Chop”, meaty sway of “Flesh Strew Temple” and  “Maggots in the Mirror” though the more raw, dryer production saps a little of the ickiness from everything, especially the bass with has lost some of that sinewy twang from yore.

That all said, I can’t help but feel we already got an Autopsy album in 2022 with Static Abyss‘s Labyrinth of Veins, as it’s Reifert and Greg Wilkinson basically doing the same thing just without Danny Coralles and Eric Cutler. But you can never have too much Autopsy, right?

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