Foul Players

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• Carcass
  March 26, 2009

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• Ken Owen
• Metal and Hardcore
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Grindcore, for the uninitiated, is the extreme genre of metal that prizes blast beats (i.e. drumming that mimics both the speed of a machine gun and the impact of percussion grenades); ultra-heavy, lightning-fast guitars that aim to disembowel you with every riff; and scary, demonic slaughterhouse growls. Basically, the kind of stuff that makes parents shit their pants whenever they hear it blasting from their kids’ rooms. Who do parents have to thank for their shitty drawers? Carcass, mainly. Forming in the mid ’80s, the British quartet are grindcore trailblazers, putting their own particularly gory (yet absurdly funny) spin on things with such impressive surgical/forensic/physiological horror-show albums as Necroticism: Descanting the Insalubrious and Reek of Putrefaction. What disaffected teen - or third-year med student - wouldn’t wanna snarl along to “Vomited Anal Tract”: “Intestinal disturbance, your ileum turns inside-out/Your duodenum is thrust up towards your mouth/Your pancreas excretes stale septic pus/Your whole digestive system is now a sticky mush”? After a decade of dedication to over-the-top autopsy rock, Carcass split in 1995. In 1999, founding drummer Ken Owen suffered a severe brain hemorrhage that put him in a coma for nearly a year – he recovered, but not far enough to play those blast beats of old, or to join his Carcass bandmates on a full-time basis when they reunited to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their first recordings, 1987’s Flesh Ripping Sonic Torment demo. And as long as Carcass and fans find joy the shared experience of “Lavaging Expectorate of Lysergide Composition,” the reunion shall continue.
Fri., March 27, 3 p.m., 2009