OK, there’s only one 11-minute song on the band’s new album, Macabre Eternal, but “Sadistic Gratification” is a layered nightmare epic well worth the trouble Autopsy went through to construct it. Acoustic guitars are weaved into two songs, opening the musical abyss that much wider. As for enduring 65 minutes of diseased old-school death metal, it’s easy with an album as good as Macabre Eternal.And Macabre Eternal has no business being this good. It’s worrisome when a legendary band returns after many years dormant, but drummer and lead bile-spitter Chris Reifert would not have resurrected the Autopsy corpse if there wasn’t a batch of songs good enough to live up to their considerable legacy. “We didn’t set out to write as much as we did,” says Reifert, speaking, rather appropriately, from an old-school landline in California. “The songs started flying at us. We couldn’t stop ’em. [Guitarist] Eric [Cutler] and I were calling each other almost every day; I’d say, ‘I’ve got a new song’ and he’d go, ‘I’ve got two!’ And we’ve got more that didn’t even make it on the album, so we’ve got a good head start on the next one.”

Autopsy died a fairly quiet death in 1995, sputtering from view with the largely derided G.G. Allin-plays-death metal ugliness of Shitfun. Its 21 songs acted as a gateway for Reifert and guitarist Danny Corrales into Abscess, a band that birthed a discography as long and demented as Autopsy’s in its 16-year life. But the Autopsy name casted a perennial shadow over Abscess. Even though the members promised an Autopsy reformation would never happen, Reifert emphasizes, “We do have the right to change our minds.” The inevitable occurred first as 2009’s Horrific Obsession 7-inch, then some live performances, then 2010’s hugely convincing The Tomb Within EP. And now Macabre Eternal, a welcome breath of reeking, fetid air in a death metal world where extremity is taken for granted, songwriting is formulaic and Pro Tools makes even the crappiest sonic lump shine like gold.

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