EP REVIEW: Perpetuated By Greed – Foul Body Autopsy
WORDS: Perran Helyes
Perpetuated By Greed is British one man death metal project FOUL BODY AUTOPSY’s first release in just over a year and contains just over eleven minutes of new music. On the other end of the extreme metal spectrum to put this in perspective, the new ORANSSI PAZUZU album released on the same day contains two songs and a third just closing in that are longer than this entire record. It’s evident from FOUL BODY AUTOPSY’s career thus far that vocalist and general instrumental whizz Tom Reynolds likes to keep proceedings concise in general but Perpetuated By Greed does this with a slightly different formula than say 2013’s debut full-length, which only just breached half an hour but with only five songs that spread their wings spanning up to nine minutes. Five of Perpetuated By Greed’s six songs are in the thirty seconds to two minutes thirty range, with the opener still fitting in a brief sample to introduce things as is customary and taking a full minute to kick in.
Indeed Perpetuated By Greed is a little different to what’s come before sonically too. It’s not the dingy unpolished brutal death metal you might expect from an outfit with this moniker, and in fact at points it barely feels like death metal at all. Instead here FOUL BODY AUTOPSY draw heavily from the thrash metal side of their sound, sounding as much like post-millennial thrash revivalists or the classic bands they were inspired by like DESTRUCTION as death metal acts like NECROPHAGIST from which FOUL BODY AUTOPSY’s name is taken, albeit with deep guttural vocals and the odd blast beat. This isn’t that much of a departure for FOUL BODY AUTOPSY, that always being a clear part of their sound, but here the in and out urgency of it as well as a clear and crisp production job lacking in much filth seems to emphasise it. Indeed with the vocals staying very much within the death metal realm at times it almost gives it a hint of BATTLECROSS, as if that band threw out all of their swaggering US groove and Gothenburg melodic touches and decided to just go as hard and fast as possible.
Needless to say with a runtime like that Perpetuated By Greed does not overstay its welcome, and its violent and frantic effect is a potent one. At points though it almost seems like there is in fact room for some of these ideas to be developed further before being spat out of the window as the next one charges in.Enslaved the Rest of Creation for example barely gets off the ground before it’s over especially as it goes through a number of shifts in tempo and feel, and these various riffs and sections barely have time to make a mark. Certain songs could even put together such as the thirty-six second Devoid of Humanity which could have perhaps had more impact as a mid-section or coda to another of these tracks than as the brief drive-by shooting it is. Closing track Complete Environmental Collapse seems to understand this, the one track to let things run for a little bit longer and the one with the most distinct flavour as a result.
It’s hard to find all too much to complain about though when the experience is so brief and largely satisfying. Perpetuated By Greed achieves what it set out to do without beating around the bush whatsoever lunging for the jugular each and every time, and really it’s a pretty enjoyable little treat for fans of extreme and violent music but with some deliciously old school sensibilities. It’s good that Reynolds understands the need to keep putting music out even in just bitesize chunks to keep his projects name out there, and eventually we’re sure to get just a little bit more.
Rating: 7/10
Perpetuated By Greed is out now via Grindscene Records.
