Band:	Autopsy
Album:	Morbidity Triumphant
Style:	Death metal
Release date:	September 2022

01. Stab The Brain
02. Final Frost
03. The Voracious One
04. Born In Blood
05. Flesh Strewn Temple
06. Tapestry Of Scars
07. Knife Slice, Axe Chop
08. Skin By Skin
09. Maggots In The Mirror
10. Slaughterer Of Souls
11. Your Eyes Will Turn To Dust

Cut my life into pieces, this is an Autopsy report; not Suffocation, not Internal Bleeding, can you believe what you're reading...

Alongside Obituary, Autopsy have been masters of the low, 'slow shifting into speed' style of death metal that seems simple on paper, but hard to execute as powerfully as both bands do. Eight albums in and eight years after their previous album, Autopsy return with an album that is as incisive and cutting as some of their classic output, meaning by default it is one of the best death metal albums of the year.

Morbidity Triumphant is what Autopsy does best: death metal that keeps the power at maximum while riding tempo changes to create devastating slamming slabs of death metal. While it may not sound the most original style in 2022, Autopsy show that imitators rarely top innovators.

The album is full of top-quality cuts, from "The Voracious One", which sounds like a condensed epic owing to its shifting nature, with spurts of powerful attack interspersed with mournful moments of audio agony, through to the filthy groove that opens "Flesh Strewn Temple", beginning a track that shifts gears like Lewis Hamilton: fluid and powerful without stalling or losing an ounce of momentum.

While this may seem formulaic, Morbidity Triumphant does have enough subtle changes so as to keep the album from feeling stagnant, with the two up-tempo blasts of power that make up "Stab The Brain" and "Maggots In The Mirror" being palette cleansers as they blaze their way through their tracks lengths. "Knife Slice, Axe Chop" drops the tempo to a doom-paced crawl, which gives listeners breathing space.

Chris Reifert once again manages to defy conventional wisdom that drummers aren't singers, with his low-end growl matching his drum masterclass throughout. Newest recruit Greg Wilkinson fits in seamlessly, ably assisted by Cutler and Corralles, who switch between razor-sharp leads and crunchy low-end riffing.

The only real shortcoming to Morbidity Triumphant is that it is a piece of music that hits so much harder when listened to in a sitting; picking it apart and listening to one or two tracks lessens the impact of the whole. This serves only to be an inconvenience rather than a hindrance, as full-length runthroughs reward you for your time.

If to underline how well-rounded this album is, I decided to mute the audio on the game Doom and left Morbidity Triumphant running; it makes for such an excellent partnership that someone should tap the band up to soundtrack the next installment of the game.

Morbidity Triumphant highlights the folly of making provisional album of the year lists this early in the year; though the year may be winding down, there is still plenty of time for albums to make a powerful impact in the remaining time that is left.