Tanya’s Army Of Awfulness: Carcass – CORPORAL JIGSORE QUANDARY

There are only two songs I could find that mentioned Corporals, and since my views on Pink Floyd seem adequately covered*, I would rather look at Carcass. Initially though I thought there would be little to say about the Napalm Death spin-off band which hasn’t been said here, or indeed is not said by the bands logo.

One wonders how someone gets into a band whose very logo is unintelligible. But then sense of lyrics comes low down in the priorities of a grindcore band: and way after “hair length”, “sounding like pigs dying in an abatoir” and of course “lifetime membership to the Tufty Club”. Lyrics to grindcore and death metal bands are always hilarious because they are never actually intelligible to the listener. Instead one has to fold out the environmentally friendly booklet in the recycled (from ethically forested wood, not the souls of the hellbound) digipak to read them. But it is always worthwhile, as grindcores gain is clearly the loss of poetry. Corporal Jigsore Quandary is not just a misspelling from comments thread about emo, it is so much more.

Excised and anatomised, deviscerated disarray
The torso diverged with pride
Deftly amputated, evulsed limbs now defunct
The trunk imbrued, tatty stumps used as lugs
For a chondrin puzzle so quaint
Head and body decollate

Its as if HP Lovecraft has been reborn, grew his hair and went hunt sabbing. Clearly the members of Carcass have a favourite section of Readers Digest: Increase Your (Cthonic) Wordpower. I have no idea what they are on about, except the vague idea that someone, somewhere is being chopped into bits. But I for one recommend the reading of these lyrics before you listen to the squealing piglike grunts these “unusual” words are fitted into. They should be enough to warn you of how bad the music would have to be to be worse than the words. Here are some more:

Battered and diffused, with placating blows
– A human jigsaw to make whole
A sequacious pattern which once fitted so snug
– Joining together each dubious lump
Ravaged disassembly, neatly cubed and diced
– A cold mannequin reassembled
Astute brain teaser, incorporate flesh and bone
So mortifying…
An incessant game – methodically made
With each cumulative piecing – of commensated meat…

Want more? Well scurry off and buy yourself Necroticism – Descanting the Insalubrious, making sure you buy a bolt gun to put yourself out of your clear misery on the way back. Who wouldn’t want to die with this as the last image in their eyeballs.

*Covered here, here and here.
But OK. Because you demanded it. Six shit things about Corporal Clegg by Pink Floyd off of a Saucerful Of Secrets.

a) A saucerful is not many secrets. Enough room for one big secret: like Pink Floyd being crap.
b) Corporal Clegg got a medal in a zoo – BECAUSE IT RHMYES WITH BLUE
c) Dave Gilmour plays a kazoo on it. Which is like blowing a raspberry all the way through the song.
d) Nick Mason sings on it. Singing drummers: guaranteed crap.
e) It is the first Pink Floyd song about war. SADLY NOT THE LAST.
f) “Corporal Clegg umbrella in the rain”: WHAT A TRENDSETTER!