As they near their 30th anniversary, Autopsy’s refusal to deviate from their chosen path is increasingly impressive. Since reuniting in 2009, these Californian death-metal pioneers have sounded even more raucous and depraved than they did on early classics such as Mental Funeral and Severed Survival. They are still firmly tethered to their trademark formula of breakneck extremity and harrowing, slow-motion doom, but there is a heightened sense of the viscerally visual to this EP, as if its creators have found new ways to express their obsessions with the gruesome and the horrifying. Strung Up and Gutted is a jarring, grubby rush of vicious speed, Children of the Filth adds a dash of grandiose schlock to the mutant lurch of Danny Coralles’ and Eric Cutler’s warped riffing, and The Withering Death is almost comically macabre: a frothing, snorting funeral march for priapic zombies. Skull Grinder confirms that Autopsy are still as monstrous as it gets.
