General Surgery - A Collection of Depravation
I’ve got to hand it to Relapse’s advertising department, they knocked out almost a whole sentence of this review for me. Gore fiends who have long been craving a new General Surgery album will have to starve a bit longer, because A Collection of Depravation is merely “a collection of the Swedish Gore-Grind outfit’s out-of-print singles, vinyl-only EPs, comp appearances, and a few unheard demos.” Thanks, guys. Shit, I could just slap a rating on it now and call it a day, but that wouldn’t be prudent. I feel it’s my duty to let everyone who dropped a load in their pants when they read that quote know that this is about as far from essential as a release gets. I do consider myself a fan of these guys, but admittedly I am a very selective one. I love the classic Necrology EP from 1991 and their breakthrough, magnum opus, 2009’s Corpus in Extremus: Analyzing Necroticism. However, the stuff in between I can live without, and this comp is pretty much all the stuff in between. It features all the material from their splits with The County Medical Examiners, Filth, and Machetazo, but good luck even telling these “songs” apart. It’s all just one indiscernible 90-second blur of noise after another that’s pretty difficult to stay awake through. I was able to make out the Carnage, Repulsion, and Carcass covers… barely, and there’s also a block of demo songs from Corpus that, while recognizable, pale in comparison to the mighty album versions. I think I know exactly why they went “unheard.” So, unless you absolutely must own everything that bears the General Surgery name, you really don’t need this. This will be a collector’s item that collects dust. I realize this is a completist’s wet dream —believe me, I have a plethora of releases just like this, and if there were anything even resembling quality here I wouldn’t be bitching like a 70-year old with kids on his lawn— but my days of owning something just for the sake of owning something are over. Save your dough, and more importantly your time, for the band’s new album, assuming they ever finish it.
(0) Comment(s)
Page 1 of 1 pages