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It has been less than a year since the release of The Headless Ritual, and yet, Autopsy are already back with their seventh full-length album. Their last output got much critical acclaim, this site included, though this writer found it middling at spots and uneven at its worst.

Tourniquets, Hacksaws and Graves is neither of those things, as the death metal icons sound rejuvenated with their ill-tempered death metal and bloody splash of foreboding doom.

Playing around with slower tempos on The Headless Ritual, that aspect continues to get attention. The lengths are more manageable, and the doom-laden songs are spaced out with efficient results. The album, not including the filler instrumental “All Shall Bleed,” avoids dipping in quality because of a well-paced track listing.

“The Howling Dead” gets into a sludge fest with almost a Southern groove to the guitar work, and the acoustic work early on in “Deep Crimson Dreaming” helps conjure up an eerie atmosphere the song title suggests.

However, this is Autopsy that’s being discussed, so brutality has to be prevalent, and not just in the subject matter. Opener “Savagery” is one of the fastest cuts the band has written since their reunion, though “Teeth of the Shadow Horde” gets close to that distinction. What the band does with finesse is throwing in a speedy break into the mid-tempo tunes, like the insane closing minute of the otherwise subtle “King of Flesh Ripped.”

The gore-drenched lyrics are as horrifying as usual, without getting into gnarly, gross-out territory.

Bones are broken, people are eaten alive, and death is always lingering in the distance; just another Sunday stroll for the group. Chris Reifert spits and growls these words out with the enthusiasm of someone slicing up their first victim, and his drumming is top notch with a few flashy lead breaks on “After the Cutting” and “Burial.”

Autopsy have revived their career the past few years, and it’s awesome that they are able to release two albums within a year of each other, something they never did even in their heyday (though Acts of the Unspeakable came out 18 months or so after Mental Funeral). None of this material comes off as b-sides or filler left over from past recording sessions, which is a testament to their fertile creativity. Tourniquets, Hacksaws and Graves hacks off the best pieces of their last two full-lengths and sews them into a gruesome, disfigured death metal abomination.

(released April 29, 2014 on Peaceville Records)