I gaze down into the barrel and see your dead eyes staring back. Already your skin is beginning to dissolve, the blood and acid forming a halo around your submerged form. Your empty eyes are like windows back into my dream of crucifixes. I see him again, reaching up to me through the liquid as the acid eats into the fat of your sad, dead face. Your skull is emerging like a figure from the mist as the fleshy trappings of life slough away from your bone white death mask. I see him again, holding out his chalice of blood to me and I hear his voice, commanding, insistent…the same single word that I hear him say every night in my troubled sleep…’Drink’.
Crucifix Dreams is the new release from Tom Reynolds' Foul Body Autopsy and after the brave, brilliant but emotionally draining three part Shadows Without Light project, it sees Foul Body Autopsy back in more visceral and gore spattered territory! The title track of the new EP is a song inspired by the horrific acts of serial killer John George Haigh, known as the Acid Bath Murderer. The song is in turns chilling, atmospheric, explosive and utterly devastating – one of the fiercest and most accomplished explorations of melodic death metal ever to crawl from the Foul Body Autopsy grave. ‘Crucifix Dreams’ was written more than five years ago and has haunted Tom ever since, stubbornly refusing to fit on any of his releases it has demanded a stage all of its own. To finally bring the song to garish, grisly life Tom has recruited an absolutely stellar cast of musicians, a dream team of metallic talent: Dirk Verbeuren (Megadeth) on drums and Steve Di Giorgio (Testament) on bass, with guitar solos being provided by Andy LaRocque (King Diamond) and Bobby Koelble (Death) and an eerie spoken word intro from Simon Shaw (Temple of Lies). And ‘Crucifix Dream’ is every bit as good as that line-up suggests.
Emphasising his decision to unleash the more feral and ferocious side of Foul Body Autopsy’s fractured personality once again, Tom has backed ‘Crucifix Dreams’ with three blistering live tracks, recorded when he headlined the Leicester Metal 2 The Masses show in April of this year. The tracks, ‘Synthetic Existence’, ‘Born Into A Manmade Hell’ and ‘Left To Rot’ hark back to Foul Body Autopsy’s self titled 2013 album and the 2014 EP So Close To Complete Dehumanization and are delivered with punishing precision to a rabid crowd. If anyone still harbours doubts about Tom Reynolds’ ability to deliver a truly intense live experience then these tracks will utterly annihilate those concerns.
Mastered by Katie Tavini (Hundred Reasons, Ash, Bloc Party etc), every note on Crucifix Dreams hits home hard and leaves a lasting impression. Add to that some classic horror artwork, an interpretation of John George Haigh’s twisted dreams, from the brilliant Dan Goldsworthy (Aborted, Corpsegrinder, Inhuman Condition etc) and it possesses some formidable visual impact as well. Out this Halloween, October 31st, Crucifix Dreams sees Foul Body Autopsy reborn in blood!