When it comes to bands that made an impact in metal’s history, we can’t ignore Carcass being part of that group. Their early work is considered to be a pioneering sound of goregrind combined with death metal with their subsequent releases deemed to have created the foundations of melodic death metal.
The best example of their musical change and breakthrough from their roots happened with their 1993’s Heartwork and they continued that path on their follow-up album Swansong which turns two decades of existence today.
Swansong was Carcass’ fifth studio album recorded in 1995 and released by Earache Records in June 10th of 1996 but it was originally intended to be released by their new record label at the time, Columbia Records. After the success of Heartwork, the band got the interest of Columbia and joined their roster in 1994 but the deal went through a lot of issues when the label decided to withdraw their support during the recording session as they thought Carcass wasn’t ready to hit the studio.
The band ignored Columbia’s plea to write more songs on top of the 17 tracks already penned down, expecting a more commercial-friendly release leaned towards a more rock ‘n roll sound and even clean singing by Jeff Walker. After several disputes, Carcass decided to return to their former label, hence getting paid twice for the same album. The final release contained 12 out of the 17 tracks written for the album, omitting some of the “stronger” tracks from the writing sessions.
As the album title suggested, Carcass announced their cease as a band around the time the album was released, due to several issues arising from the lineup, particularly Steer’s lack of interest in the metal genre after completing Swansong’s recording. The album was well received by critics and sold steadily for the following months after its release but some of their fans considered it to be a low-point on their career. Here’s some recent comments from their fans regarding the album:
Mikael Ulven states:
“I love the album personally. Sure, it didn’t have the gore themes or the sound of the earlier Carcass albums, but it had amazing lyrics. The songs were also very well crafted. The album’s sound really makes sense considering the fact that grindcore had so much in common with punk. Swansong reminds me a lot of a punk album. It seems to me that Carcass were returning to their roots with this album.”
Pedro Guerrero says:
“Despite the circumstances surrounding the making of this album, I think Swansong is an interesting piece of art both musically and lyrically.
It was pretty obvious that the whole band was pissed off with the idea of becoming a mainstream band just to fulfill the deal with the label. That bitterness is perfectly reflected on this album.
I still keep my tape bought in the nineties and play it once in a while. I like Swansong much more than Surgical Steel, BTW.”
Aron Torgny Sändh says:
“By coincidence, I was just sitting listening to ‘Swansong’ when I saw this post right now. No matter what people say, I’d say this album is superior to ‘Heartwork’. It has better riffs and more groove. I think it’s the change of style that made people upset because when a band do something new it signals that the band has changed direction. The fans respond by protesting in order to stop the band from continuing in that direction. Now when we have ‘Surgical steel’ people can finally relax and appreciate ‘Swansong’. Much like people started to like ‘Another perfect day’ (and other albums like it) in retrospect.”
Dylan Wheeler thinks:
“Obviously not a career killer since you’re still going strong, but definitely my least favorite in your discography. That said when I saw you play a couple songs off it live in Sydney a few years ago, y’know, it wasn’t the worst.”
What do you think about Swansong? Tell us a bit about it and spare a good hour to listen to this record to refresh your memory and, you never know, you may happen to like it more now than what you remember.
