With their first album in seven years, Bay Area death-metal titans Autopsy continue the gore-splattered comeback run they began with 2011’s Macabre Eternal. This time, the classic line-up of vocalist/drummer Chris Reifert and guitarists Danny Coralles and Eric Cutler are joined by new bassist Greg Wilkinson (also of Brainoil), who signed on in 2021. “What’s Greg bringing to the table?” Reifert asks, repeating Apple Music’s question. “A lot of liquor, so there’s that. But he’s also adding some cool dimensions to the songs and coming up with some really creative basslines. He’s just a cool person to have around, too.” On Morbidity Triumphant, Reifert returns to the fertile lyrical ground of early Autopsy staples like 1989’s Severed Survival, writing songs inspired by ’80s horror movies, serial killers and bizarre cults of his own creation. Below, he comments on each track. “Stab the Brain” “We wanted to start off with something right out of the gate that just laid into things. We wanted to immediately stab your brain musically. Lyrically, it’s about a cult ritual where a woman is standing over a coffin spread-legged and squirts a baby out into the coffin and then stabs it in the brain. So, that part’s pretty literal. Things get nonsensical from there—all of a sudden, she’s like a dead queen that everyone needs to worship.” “Final Frost” “The end of the world is a popular theme in metal because the apocalypse is always fun to talk about. But rather than the Earth going up in a scorching ball of flame or something like that, it slowly freezes, and everyone gradually turns into frozen statues. I tried to pick interesting words that fit together well, that aren’t just like, ‘You’ve been hacked in half’ or whatever. Everything’s been done, so you’ve got to do better these days. Greg wrote the riff to that song. That was his contribution to the album, and he did a hell of a job.” “The Voracious One” “There’s two songs on this album that harken back to my favourite scenes from horror movies or horror stories from the olden days. I just had a rare moment of horror reflection, I guess. For some reason, I thought about that story from the first Creepshow, whether it’s from the movie or the book—‘The Crate.’ We used to write about horror stuff more back in the old days, on Severed Survival and stuff, but now we hardly ever do it anymore. But fuck, there’s no rules here. Musically, it’s a slower kind of shambling, stoner-y thing.” “Born in Blood” “Lyrically, this doesn’t mean a whole hell of a lot. It’s just blood and guts and gruesomeness and all things slimy and squishy and nasty. It's not a cohesive story, but I did steal the title from a line in the new Dexter season, so that kind of stood out. Musically, this is pretty old-school death metal, to use that tired old chestnut of a term. It’s pretty straightforward, but it’s a lot of fun.” “Flesh Strewn Temple” “This is a Danny song—he wrote most of the riffs for the record. Lyrically, it’s another cult reference, this time about a modern-day human sacrifice cult. I imagine it exists in some remote place in the world that no one goes to and that has no access to technology or anything like that. One of those places that’s frozen in time but still exists in 2022. And there’s flesh strewn everywhere, pretty much.” “Tapestry of Scars” “That one is about someone who’s super into self-harm—cutting and scarring and all that—but in an artistic way. Not even because they’re trying to make up for something wrong with their life or whatever—or maybe that’s completely what it’s about. Either way, they’re obsessed with turning their entire body into one giant scab or cut or sore or scar or whatever. The object is to have nothing unscarred, from head to toe—not even a millimetre. So, you’re a walking tapestry or scars, basically.” “Knife Slice, Axe Chop” “This is another rare moment of reflection. I’m usually not a looking-back person. But I thought it’d be cool to do a song about watching horror movies back when we were obsessed with finding the goriest, splatter-iest, bloodiest movies. Just go to the video store, rent a pile of movies and watch them over and over. You’re rewinding your favourite scenes, like, ‘Did you see that head fly across the street?’ I think the video we did for this one perfectly captured that essence.” “Skin by Skin” “That one is about someone that preys on people who are vulnerable. They meet people in the street and say, ‘Hey, I’ll take you home and make you safe and give you food and shelter.’ And then, when it’s too late to get out, they notice everything in the entire house is made of human skin sewn together: faces, legs, hands, feet, torsos—you name it. I’m talking the ceiling, the floor, the walls, everything. And guess what? This person that just got suckered into the house is the next piece.” “Maggots in the Mirror” “Here’s another one where I was thinking about a scene from an old horror movie. I don’t know why I thought of it, but I had a flashback to the scene in Poltergeist where the dude is looking in the mirror and, next thing you know, he’s ripping his face off and shit. Kind of a classic scene. So, that was the inspiration for that one. One of my favourite lines in the song is, ‘Your face is a worm farm.’ I prefer not to reference old movies anymore, but once in a while, you’ve just got to fucking go for it.” “Slaughterer of Souls” “This is another one that’s not really about anything in particular. It’s just a matter of putting cool words together in cool structures. There’s no storyline. Looking back at the lyrics, it just seems like a kind of weird psychosis that I can’t explain. I was alerted to the At The Gates album Slaughter of the Soul, but this is just different enough to not worry about it. Plus, we’re not calling our album that. Plus, At The Gates is cool, so it’s not a terrible thing to be mentioned with.” “Your Eyes Will Turn to Dust” “Again, there’s no storyline on this one. It’s just a title that sounded cool and kind of scary. It’s just words strung together in a way that I thought was cool. And it’s fun to read. Even if it wasn’t set to music, it’s something I can trip out on reading.”