Autopsy Can't Stop, Won't Stop Grinding Skulls

Autopsy carved death metal a new asshole with their 1989 debut, Severed Survival, before outdoing even themselves on their 1991 follow-up, Mental Funeral. Led by vocalist/drummer Chris Reifert—who had already seared his name in underground infamy by playing on Death’s genre-defining Scream Bloody Gore—the Oakland-based horror fiends proceeded to annihilate everything in their bloody path before going tits up after recording 1995’s intentionally comical Shitfun.

Upon reforming in 2009, Reifert and his bandmates—original Autopsy guitarists Danny Coralles and Eric Cutler alongside bassist Joe Allen—seemed to saw off a new release every eight months or so. Next month, they’ll drop a new album (or is it an EP?) called Skull Grinder and the career-spanning box set After The Cutting, which also includes a book by Darkthrone cover artist and prominent underground aficionado Dennis Dread. Meanwhile, Reifert’s punk band, Violation Wound (in which he plays guitar instead of drums), will release a pair of albums combined onto one CD. When we wonder aloud how our man even has time to talk with us, he just laughs and goes, “There’s plenty of time when I’m just sitting around watching stupid TV shows. But I like to make music and put things out. It gives me a reason to be around.”

Noisey: Skull Grinder has seven songs on it. Are you calling it a full-length or an EP?
Chris Reifert: [Laughs] People can call it whatever they want. It’s seven songs, 28-and-a-half minutes long, so whatever you wanna call that. The label is calling it a “mini-LP,” but we like to call it an album because [Slayer’s] Reign In Blood was 28 minutes and that’s definitely an album. But nowadays you can put out something that’s 40 minutes long and people will call it an EP, so it’s kind of a loose term these days. Call it whatever you want—we call it Skull Grinder.

Did you approach it differently than you did the recent slew of Autopsy material?
Nah, we’ve never changed anything since the first demo. As far as writing, recording and all that stuff, it’s always the same every time. The approach is unchanged since day one. The songwriting is exactly what you think we’d be doing—no abrupt changes in style or weird experiments or anything like that. If you liked us before, I think you’ll be pretty stoked. And as usual, if you didn’t like us before, this won’t change your mind. [Laughs] It’s us doing the only thing we know how to do.

The sleeve for Skull Grinder might be my new favorite Autopsy album cover.
Aw, cool! Yeah, Wes Benscoter killed it so hard. It’s a really good one. Wes has been doing lots of stuff for us lately, and whenever we get the newest one we’re like, “That’s our new favorite.” He was really stoked this time. When he was working on it, he told us it was one of his best yet. His enthusiasm caught on and when we finally saw it, we were like, “Yes, indeed.” I’m just waiting to see tattoos of it on people.

Is Wes pretty much your go-to guy for Autopsy artwork these days? He’s done three out of your last four full-lengths.
We usually don’t think about that until it’s time to put something out. But this time it was really cool because we knew we were gonna have two releases coming out so we wanted to pick two different people. Wes was definitely at the top of the list and then coincidentally we sort of got in touch with Kev Walker again, who did Mental Funeral and the surgeons for Severed Survival. It was around the time we were thinking about artwork for it, so we asked him if he was into it and he said yeah. Then it was just a matter of figuring out who was gonna do which release. So Wes ended up doing Skull Grinder and Kev did the box set. They both did a really great job, so we were lucky: We got two masterpieces at once.

So you hadn’t been in touch with Kev for a while?
No, this was all very recent. He got in touch with [Autopsy’s label] Peaceville, I forget why, and they forwarded his email to me. But we hadn’t stayed in touch or anything like that. He’s a busy dude—he does comics and whatever else—so he didn’t have to take this job on, which made it extra cool. The cover concept was fun, too. Since he did the surgeons cover for Severed, we thought it would be cool to show what happened after that, like what were they working on? [Laughs] So it was a riff on that. We were pretty damn pleased with how it came out. It’s even got a little nod to the original Severed cover, with the ripped-in-half guy. And if you look at the bottom of the surgeons, under the clothing, there’s part of the Mental Funeral beast. It’s almost like him in disguise, so it ties all that stuff together.

After The Cutting covers Autopsy’s entire career.
Yeah, pretty much everything from day one ’til right now. Well, not everything. [Laughs] It’s four discs, 82 songs, and five hours. It starts off with Skull Grinder in its entirety, the original Autopsy demos, some rehearsal tapes that Danny found that I don’t think I’d even ever heard before—they’re from ’91 and ’92. Then there’s a weird song we did for a compilation a few years ago, where we went under the name Grave Violator. Then it’s got two discs of studio cuts—one disc from chapter one of the band and the second disc is chapter two, the more recent stuff. We tried to represent every release as best we could. And then the fourth disc is a ton of live recordings and rehearsal stuff from recent years that no one’s ever heard before. So we tried to keep it interesting and not the same old stuff repackaged.

And there’s a book by Dennis Dread in there.
Yeah, it’s like 90-something pages. We’re still going over the layout and looking at it, so it’s in the final stages of being completed. It’s the whole story of the band, but worded differently because we’ve told the same stories over and over and most people know all the obvious ones. Dennis took it upon himself to make it interesting and get a little deeper than that. He did a great job and his style is really cool. It’s entertaining and fun to read. There’s definitely some stories in there that no one’s ever heard, plus tons of pictures. It’s pretty crazy—there’s a lot to look at as well as read.

Did Dennis interview you guys for the book?
Yeah, he talked to all of us. He talked to Adam [Munoz], who’s our engineer over at Fantasy Studios. He talked to Ron Falcon, who’s been our go-to roadie/stagehand since before the band even really started. He talked to Kev Walker and a bunch of other people from the death metal scene. He did his research and really worked his ass off. It’s pretty badass so far; I can’t wait to see it all finished.

Autopsy has been incredibly prolific since getting back together a few years ago. I count nearly a dozen new releases since 2009. Most bands slow down as they get older, but not you guys. What do you attribute that to?
I don’t know. [Laughs] We don’t plan things out, really. When we feel inspired to do something, we do it. It used to be normal for bands to put out an album every year without fail, and I think that’s a good way to do it. We’re just trying to keep it going and keep it interesting. If we’re not feeling inspired, you won’t see anything from us. So that just tells you that we’re super-enthused right now. We won’t do anything half-hearted.

Do you feel like Autopsy functions better now that you’re older?
I guess. [Laughs] We have our ups and downs, like any band. The thing is, I don’t think we feel any differently when we get together and jam. You know how that is—when you’re in the rehearsal room you’re not thinking about how old or young you are. Time doesn’t mean anything. You’re just getting into it—writing new tunes or trying to remember the old stuff, which is a challenge sometimes. [Laughs]

Well, I use the word “older” because I feel like “more mature” might be inaccurate.
[Laughs] Yeah, good point. You pretty much nailed it on that one.

How often do you guys get together to practice these days?
It depends. If there’s nothing on the books, we could go a while without getting together. But right now we’ve been jamming once a week because we have some shows coming up and we need to be sharp for those. So pretty much every Saturday night lately. We gotta do our homework.

Your punk band, Violation Wound, also has a new release coming out in November.
Yeah, it’s a big month! [Laughs] We’re putting out two albums on one disc because the albums are pretty short. We did an album’s worth of stuff last year and another album’s worth of stuff earlier this year. Most of it ended up going on EPs and splits, but we always knew that later down the road we’d want to put it together the way it was recorded, in the right order, and now’s the time for that. There’s still more splits and stuff coming out, too. And we’re working on stuff for a new album next year.

Violation Wound recently posted an acoustic song on SoundCloud. Is that a first for you guys?
Yeah, but we actually did a whole album’s worth of stuff like that. We’re gonna press that one up ourselves and hopefully it’ll be out sometime before the year is over. It’s all acoustic instruments, so it’s definitely a different take on what we do. We wrote some songs just for the occasion and then we re-did some of our old songs in that format. We also did an Eat My Fuk cover—“Destroy The Factory”—so it’s pretty cool. I love how it came out. You can smell the booze when you listen to it. [Laughs]

The acoustic song you posted is called “Some Kind Of Dread.” Is that a reference to the Misfits’ “Some Kinda Hate”?
The title is a riff on that, and the “Dread” part is a nod to Dennis Dread. Our whole acoustic thing started because he put out this compilation album called Whispers Through The Black Veil, and there’s a couple of acoustic songs on there that are really stark and cool-sounding. There’s a Hank Ray song and a Rob Coffinshaker song, and I got really juiced by those. I thought they were super-cool, so I wanted to do something like that with Violation Wound. But the song has nothing to do with the Misfits or Dennis—it’s just a cool title.

And it’s about drinking.
[Laughs] That’s definitely part of it. The other part is just coping with the sense of dread in the air, just dealing with society and how crazy people are. Might as well drink up!

Pre-order Skull Grinder here.

J. Bennett’s Autopsy photographs appear in the deluxe hardback edition of the band’s 2011 album, Macabre Eternal.