23 Years Ago: AUTOPSY finish recording Shitfun

Daily Noise - / 2017

23 Years Ago: AUTOPSY finish recording Shitfun

[In late 1994] we were three months on the road in the U.S. and we lost a lot of money as well as time. That tour was too long, we didn't even enjoy to be together on the road anymore. When the tour was finally over, we all had the feeling that we definitely had to put an end behind it all. However, we wanted to go with our heads up high and that's why we still recorded one more album - "Shitfun" - and played one last show.
- Chris Reifert / Autopsy interview, Voices from the Darkside, 2011

It took 11 days to complete the 21 tracks that made up AUTOPSY's fourth and last album (until their reformation 14 years later), Shitfun. Recording finished on this day in 1994.

As the above quote explains, the band was essentially split at this point. Chris Reifert (drums, vocals) and Danny Coralles (guitars) had already recorded a couple of demos as ABSCESS. As ABSCESS they released six albums and several splits between 1995 and 2010 when AUTOPSY, properly reformed, began releasing new material following the well-received Horrific Obsession.

Shitfun was produced with Jonathan Burnside - probably best known as engineer with the MELVINS on their early 90s records - at Razor's Edge in San Francisco.

The studio was in an old 3-story Victorian near the Haight Ashbury district. It once belonged to Anne Rice and was the setting for her book "Interview With the Vampire". The building proved to be as good of a space for music production as it was for gothic horror. On any given month we'd be working on beat-driven industrial mixes with Jack Dangers of Meat Beat Manifesto, helping Jawbreaker and The Red House Painters invent the prototypes for Emo, cranking out dub with HR from the Bad Brains, killing brain cells with the death metal of Autopsy or carrying the punk rock torch further with seminal releases from labels like Boner, Sub Pop, Fat Wreck Chords, Amphetamine Reptile and Alternative Tentacles.

Although Razor's Edge is long gone, Burnside continues to record and produce, you can find his website here.