Death metal pioneer Chris Reifert will always be known first and foremost for his seminal doom/death outfit Autopsy, but my favorite stuff from the guy has always been post-Autopsy project Abscess, the hardcore punk-influenced death metal band that he started up in the mid 90s with fellow Autopsy member Danny Coralles. Abscess were an odd band, one that blended together crushing primitive death metal, Sabbathy doom-blooze, and bursts of feral fast-paced punk rock, all with a weird discordant quality to the guitars. There's a quirky, somewhat psychedelic vibe to much of their stuff that was only enhanced by the often bizarre artwork that adorned their albums, much of which was created by Reifert himself via bizarre illustrations that resembled Lovecraftian horrors as viewed through the lens of Mike Diana's Boiled Angel comic. Unfortunately, Abscess called it quits not too long ago, but Aphelion has gathered together a bunch of the band's rare out-of-print splits, demo recordings and live tracks for this new collection, and it's essential for fans of Abscess's brand of quirky, filthy death metal who missed out on the original releases. Bourbon, Blood And Butchery collects the songs off of their splits with Population Reduction, Bonesaw, and Eat My Fuk, a number of live tracks recorded between 2005 and 2009 (including songs from their sets at Los Angeles Murderfest and Maryland Deathfest), and a 1999 rehearsal demo, with album art from the mighty Dennis Dread.
The only one of these releases that we've been able to stock in the past is the split with Population Reduction, whose original write-up follows:
It sucks that San Francisco weirdoes Abscess recently called it quits after almost two decades of delivering their quirky stoner death, but some new material has still oozed out in the wake of their exit, like this slammin' split LP with fellow Cali grinders Population Reduction. The Abscess side of this record serves up eight new tracks of their blistering acid death from these underground vets/Autopsy members, nothing quite as wonky as what I heard on their phenomenal final album Dawn of Inhumanity, but still plenty warped, songs like "Nausea Without End", "Bourbon, Blood and Butchery", "Volcanic Psychosis" and "Senseless Waste of Space" grinding out putrid blasts of sticky, sickly dissonant death metal slime, punky thrash, Sabbathy riffing and those weird forays into a kind of noxious stoner rock grooviness that has been one of their trademarks since the beginning, and there's a very strange detour into the Pepto-Bismol jingle that briefly appears at the end. Abscess fuse together an old school death metal assault with hardcore punk and a subliminal psych influences and it's a style all of their own that I'm definitely going to miss, but these songs make their passing much easier to bear.
Beyond that material, the tracks from the split EPs with Bonesaw and Eat My Fuk are equally raw and crazed, tracks like "Born to be Doomed" and "Skulldozer" rampaging with souped-up Motorhead style thrash that breaks down into some wicked Sabbathian weirdness, while "Poison Messiah" assaults the listener with a killer blast of crazed heaviness that shifts between spastic, discordant grind, slower, Voivodian riffs and brief bits of bone-crushing glacial doom. There's a killer cover of the classic Black Flag song "Nervous Breakdown" that gets filtered through Abscess's putrid deathpunk vision, too. The live tracks are raw soundboard recordings, but they certainly sound ferocious enough, especially those taken from the band's 2009 appearance at Maryland Deathfest that I was fortunate enough to witness. The three rehearsal tracks are pretty raw as well, but feature some of the more brutal, death metal centric songs on this collection. Newcomers to Abscess's twisted, drug-addled death metal should certainly start with their semi-classic Seminal Vampires and Maggot Men, but for anyone already hooked on Abscess's quirky, tongue-in-cheek brand of weirdo death, this is great stuff.