Horrified is the only studio album by American grindcore band Repulsion. The album was recorded for US$300 at the basement studio of engineer Larry Hennessy over the course of three to four days in June 1986. Horrified features fast songs combining elements of thrash metal, death metal and hardcore punk; blast beats, and bloody, gory lyrics inspired by horror films and comics. The album was initially released as a demo titled Slaughter of the Innocent, but failed to attract record label interest, resulting in Repulsion's disbandment in September 1986.
After circulating in tape trading circles, Horrified was given an official release with its present title and adjusted artwork through Necrosis Records, a sublabel of Earache Records owned by Bill Steer and Jeff Walker of Carcass, in July 1989. The album is widely considered a classic and highly influential grindcore album and has been credited with pioneering the goregrind subgenre; retrospective reviews acknowledge its influence whilst also describing it as an enjoyable listen. In 2009, Decibel ranked Horrified as the greatest grindcore album of all time, with Terrorizer ranking it as the second-greatest American grindcore album.
Background In 1984, Matt Olivo and Scott Carlson formed the band Tempter in Flint, Michigan. In the fall of 1984, they briefly renamed themselves Ultraviolence before settling on Genocide. The band recorded its first demo, known as Armies of the Dead, in November 1984. In the spring of 1985, following a period of lineup instabilities, Carlson and Olivo agreed to disband and merge Genocide with Chuck Schuldiner's Death. In August 1985, only weeks after they arrived in Altamonte Springs, Florida, drummer Kam Lee left Death. Unable to find a new drummer, the band attempted to work on new material. Carlson and Olivo found themselves at creative odds with Schuldiner; Carlson said that the latter wanted to take things in a more technical and guitar-oriented direction, while he and Olivo wanted to "completely thrash out". After returning to Flint, Carlson and Olivo reformed Genocide and recruited drummer Dave "Grave" Hollingshead, a punk rock drummer whom they heard about from a newspaper article about a grave robbery. Hollingshead's musical background in funk and new wave differed from those of his bandmates, who were primarily into heavy metal.
In October 1985, Genocide recorded the Violent Death demo and began playing local shows around Flint. Hollingshead initially struggled to play to the speeds Genocide wanted, leading him to play what they described as a "cheating beat"—"hitting the hi-hat every other time he was not hitting the snare". Within a few months, his drumming speed rapidly increased; Carlson said the lyrics of "The Stench of Burning Death", "Six Feet Under", and "The Lurking Fear", which were meant to be played at a slower, Slayer-esque speed, became "garbled". In January 1986, Genocide recorded The Stench of Burning Death demo at WFBE Studios with the help of guitarist Aaron Freeman, who was made a permanent member thereafter. The band attempted to shop the demo to various record labels, who responded with indifference and viewed the band as too extreme and uncommercial. According to Carlson, the demo was rejected by Combat, Metal Blade, and New Renaissance Records. In May 1986, Genocide changed their name to Repulsion, after the Roman Polanski film of the same name, due to the existence of several other bands under their former name.
Development
Olivo said that 75–80% of the songs on Horrified were written while Repulsion was known as Genocide. All but eight of the album's songs are taken from the band's previous demos, and most were completed before Freeman joined the band. The intro of "The Stench of Burning Death" was taken from the chorus of an old Repulsion song titled "Crack of Doom". "Six Feet Under", "Decomposed", and "The Lurking Fear" were written during Carlson and Olivo's time with Schuldiner and Death in Florida. Carlson and Olivo were primarily responsible for the album's writing, either through the former bringing in a complete song that the latter would contribute to or both of them combining their ideas in equal measure. Freeman contributed to the writing of "Eaten Alive", "Acid Bath", "Crematorium", and "Splattered Cadavers". Carlson later described his and Olivo's organization style as a "dictatorship" that he believed was not enjoyable for Hollingshead. Although he said Repulsion "kind of ended up using [him] as a drum machine", Olivo felt Hollingshead brought in his own influences, such as with his use of downbeats when playing blast beats. Freeman highlighted Hollingshead's use of swing beats on "Slaughter of the Innocent" and "Bodily Dismemberment" as representing his experience in hardcore and funk bands.
In June 1986, Repulsion recorded Horrified, then known as Slaughter of the Innocent, at the basement studio of engineer Larry Hennessy. According to Freeman, the album was recorded in three to four days, with two days spent on drums and another two days on guitars and vocals. Carlson said the recording marked the first time Repulsion's members had to be isolated from one another, which "threw everybody off" and made the band less "tight" than they had been during rehearsals. Repulsion self-funded the album's recording due to the lack of label interest. Doug Earp, the owner of a local record store called Wyatt Earp, paid the recording costs of US$300; the band did not pay him back until the album was released. Carlson said that Repulsion had intended to release Slaughter of the Innocent as an album rather than a demo, either through their own or an established label, but were unhappy with Hennessy's recording.
Hollingshead recorded his parts in the studio's utility room with a Tama Rockstar drum kit. Olivo tracked his parts in the control room with a Vantage Flying V; Freeman also used a Gibson Flying V. Situated in a room between Hollingshead and Olivo, Carlson recorded his parts—intended as scratch tracks—with a Squier P Bass into a Boss distortion pedal connected to a DI box at the recording console, so Hollingshead could hear them while recording drums. He described the resulting sound—which William York of AllMusic called "an unholy mess of distorted sludge"—as a "happy accident". The guitars and bass tracks were re-recorded thereafter. According to Carlson, the re-recorded bass tracks were lost when Hennessy "blew over" them during the recording of guitar solo overdubs, resulting in his scratch tracks being used on the final album. Prior to recording, Carlson caught strep throat but continued to practice vocals and "didn't let [his] voice heal properly", resulting in it permanently moving to a higher register after the studio sessions.
Composition and lyrics Horrified consists of 18 songs with a running time of just under 30 minutes, with its tracks averaging around one to two minutes in length. Carlson cited Discharge as an influence on the album's length, stating that the band "needed 30 minutes, we figured—we were really into punk bands—and Discharge albums were about 30 minutes long, so we figured '18 songs'." Musically, the album has been described as both grindcore and death metal. Revolver Eli Enis viewed the album as a "missing link between mid-Eighties American thrash and early English grindcore", while Alex DiStefano of the Phoenix New Times described it as a "hybrid" of death metal and hardcore punk. Backed by raw production, the album's songs are fast-paced and show few signs of groove and melody. They feature thrash metal riffs and blast beats, as well as "noisy whammy-bar-eruption solos" reminiscent of Slayer. Carlson's distorted bass was influenced by Motörhead, Discharge, and Venom. At the time of Horrified recording, Hollingshead said he was listening to "death metal, anything fast—Slayer, Metallica, Sodom, [Corrosion of Conformity], D.R.I., GBH, [and] Black Flag." Alexander Santelt of Metal.de described the album's drumming as "chaotic, yet extremely driving".
J. Bennett of Terrorizer described the lyrics of Horrified as "blood soaked". DiStefano said that they tell stories of "cannibalism, rancid corpses, zombies, blood, gore, the horrors of war, and the apocalypse." Santelt writes that while the lyrics are primarily focused on "gore horror", songs such as "Slaughter of the Innocent" show elements of "socially critical hardcore". In a 2012 interview with BrooklynVegan, Carlson said that his lyrics were "a product of [his] surroundings", with some songs "conveying real fears and emotion while others are just pure exploitative fun." He drew influence from splatter films such as Dawn of the Dead and Evil Dead, horror comics like Tales from the Crypt and Twisted Tales, and the bands Crucifix and Discharge. He credited the latter with influencing the lyrics of "The Stench of Burning Death", "Slaughter of the Innocent", and "Pestilent Decay". Carlson's vocals, influenced by Cronos and Jeff Becera, were called "brutal" by Distefano and likened to a guttural, "zombie-fied version" of Slayer's Tom Araya by Enis. York called them a "mid-range sneer" that would differ from the "exaggerated Cookie Monster style of much later grindcore".
"Slaughter of the Innocent" is about the end of the world and was musically written by Carlson and Olivo with Discharge and Celtic Frost in mind. According to Carlson, "Decomposed" is the "ballad of a flesh-eating zombie". Selected as one of the album's highlights by York, "Radiation Sickness" was described by Joe DiVita of Loudwire as "a frenzied attack of clanging cymbal bashing and gnashing guitars". Decibel Gregg Pratt described "Splattered Cadavers" as "speedgrindmayhem". The lyrics of "Festering Boils" were taken—largely unaltered—from a "rough draft" written by Carlson's friend Jim Mark. "Crematorium" was the last song written for Horrified, being completed days before recording commenced. The song's lyrics were written by Carlson, Freeman, and Dejecta vocalist Lee Williams, the latter of whom Carlson later called its "main songwriter". "Driven to Insanity" was inspired by Re-Animator and features a "victorious", galloping punk riff. "The Lurking Fear" was titled after the short story of the same name by H.P. Lovecraft, although its lyrics "have nothing to do with it", according to Carlson. "Black Breath" was inspired by the Nazgûls of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings series and is the only song on Horrified to not feature a blast beat. Carlson wrote the lyrics of "Maggots in Your Coffin" after its title was suggested by Tom Puro, a friend of Repulsion.
Release Repulsion hoped the Slaughter of the Innocent demo would garner them label attention, and its subsequent failure to do so left them feeling confused and disillusioned. In July 1986, Hollingshead left Repulsion to join the Army, which Carlson attributed to him and Olivo constantly pushing him to play faster. The band recruited Tom Puro as a replacement drummer that month. By this point, Carlson felt that Repulsion had said all that they needed to with Horrified and were creatively burnt out. The band subsequently disbanded following one final performance in September 1986. At Earp's request, the Horrified lineup would reunite twice thereafter to perform at the Fallout Shelter in Flint on November 7, 1987, and January 1, 1988. In a 2016 interview with Echoes and Dust, Carlson said that Hollingshead's departure and the birth of Freeman's son shortly after the recording of Horrified resulted in "a transitional period [that] we just never recovered from", and believed at the time that the album "would just be forgotten forever" after record labels showed no immediate interest in Repulsion.