Total ignorance and a gross error on my sense of judgment led me to deem Autopsy as an obscure, good-for –nothing outfit. Things changed for better once I heard the track Dead from Mental Funeral. My fatal crime of living in ignorance was immediately absolved once I heard it.  Pure old school mayhem is what you get from Mental Funeral in its sludgy, festering album where Chris Reifert proves to you why he is the undisputed Baap of death metal. Reifert’s brilliant skill in growling like a psychopath while simultaneously drumming like a maniac is one of the prime reasons, among many others,  for this album standing tall with pride among its peer.

The album is primarily a skull-thumping, jaw crushing album where the sole emphasis is laid on the songwriting without concentrating upon the technicality or brutality factors. The songs are extremely well crafted that comes with a lot of melodies that are pretty atonal in nature, over its fuzzy sounding riffs. Though the solos could have carried a lot more flesh to pack an extra punch, it somehow seems perfect in the album’s context. The mediocre production seems to add a very sludge-like feel to the album as though the band played in a blanketed gutter line. The increased presence of a lot of doom passages that sees slow chord progressions leading to explosive breaks is one of the strong points of the band.

The sludge tainted riffs constitutes well the emotion of dying a miserable death at the hand something unknown, akin to a Kafkaesque situation. The band’s other forte lies in their incredible ability to added twisted melodies over this macabre, gory show with the help of odd interludes throughout the album. The mediocre production akin to Kanti Shah’s cheaply produced B-grade bollywood flicks, somehow acts as an anticlimax to Mental Funeral’s entire plot. Instead of sulking and frowning you somehow rejoice the fact that the not-so=polished production works well in getting you hooked to this gem. With lots of dynamic and character to spare, Mental Funeral is Autopsy’s best album till date and a a legendary classic of all time. Listen to it or get dragged to hell.