Fit for an Autopsy is an American deathcore/groove metal band. While initially just a small regional name, a few lucky breaks and a whole lot of hard work have made them one of the few modern rising stars in an otherwise-dying genre.
Formed in Jersey City, New Jersey in 2008 by guitarists Will Putney and Patrick Sheridan, vocalist Nate Johnson, drummer Brian Mathis, and bassist Seth Coleman, they quickly got a demo recorded, but Coleman was already out of the band less than a year in; in his place came Charlie Busacca in 2009. The Hell on Earth EP dropped that same year, and various regional shows quickly followed, including a short tour with fellow New Jersey residents Abacinate in 2010. They also signed to Guy Kozowyk's Black Market Activities label within this general timeframe as well; The Process of Human Extermination, their full-length debut, was released in June of 2011 and was followed by a tour with Molotov Solution and The Devastated several months later.
A short tour supporting Dying Fetus, Job for a Cowboy, Volumes, and Last Chance to Reason followed around the very beginning of 2012, but the increased touring did not sit well with everyone, and by the end of the year, Busacca and Mathis were both gone. In their place came Shane Slade (freshly out of onetime tourmates Molotov Solution) and Josean Orta, respectively, and a deal was also inked with Entertainment One music; Tim Howley (The World We Knew) also joined as a third guitarist.
Hellbound, their sophomore album, dropped in September of 2013, and with it came several other high profile tours. Alas, this lineup was not to last, and in what is a common theme with bands that he has been a member of, Nate Johnson left in April of 2014. Greg Wilburn (The Devastated) was welcomed in as a temporary replacement, and after a series of tours, Joe Badolato was brought on as their new full-time vocalist in early 2015.
After a run with Aborted, Archspire, and Dark Sermon, they put out Absolute Hope Absolute Hell in October of 2015. More touring followed as usual, and in what was becoming a relatively consistent theme, Slade left (having been fired this time) sometime in the middle of 2016, with longtime friend Peter "Blue" Spinazola joining on what started as a live basis before being made full-time sometime around either the end of the year or the very beginning of 2017. The Great Collapse, their fourth full-length, released on March 17, 2017.
Current Members:
- Will Putney - guitars (2008-present)
- Pat Sheridan - guitars, backing vocals (2008-present)
- Josean Orta - drums (2012-present)
- Tim Howley - guitars (2013-present)
- Joe Badolato - lead vocals (2015-present)
- Peter "Blue" Spinazola - bass (2017-present)
Discography:
- Demo (2008)
- Hell on Earth (2009) (EP)
- The Process of Human Extermination (2011)
- Hellbound (2013)
- Absolute Hope Absolute Hell (2015)
- The Depression Sessions (2016) (split with Thy Art Is Murder and The Acacia Strain)
- The Great Collapse (2017)
- The Sea of Tragic Beasts (2019)
- "Fear Tomorrow" (2020) (single)
- Oh What the Future Holds (2022)
- The Aggression Sessions (2023) (split with Thy Art Is Murder and Malevolence)
THE GRIP OF OPPRESSION TIGHTENS THE NOOSE, BUT WHEN THEY KICK OUT THE CHAIR, TROPES! WILL! HANG!:
- All Drummers Are Animals: Josean Orta is known for his extremely hard-hitting and aggressive playing style.
- Ascended Extra: Josean Orta and Blue were both live fill-ins (and, in Blue's case, a longtime friend of the band) before being made full-time.
- Audience Participation Song: Quite a few.
- "Thank You Budd Dwyer": "THE SYSTEM IS DEAD! GUN TO MY HEAD! I'VE GOT THE WAY OUT!"
- "Do You See Him": "DO YOU SEE HIM? HE WALKS AS ONE WITH YOU! DO YOU SEE? THE DEVIL? INSIDE OF YOU?"
- "Absolute Hope Absolute Hell": People typically shout the title.
- "Murder in the First": "DEAR DEVIL, I FUCKING QUIT! YOU CAN HAVE THIS WORLD, IT'S A PIECE OF SHIT!"
- "Hydra": "'CAUSE WHEN YOU CUT OFF THE HEAD, FUCKING TWO GROW BACK!"
- "Heads Will Hang": People typically shout the title at the end of the bridge.
- "Black Mammoth": "Rise from the ashes! Oh, foul black mammoth!"
- Big Fun: Pat used to be this before losing a fairly significant amount of weight. Despite this, he is still occasionally referred to as "Fat Pat" by people who have known him since his old Jersey hardcore days. Tim Howley is a straighter example.
- Cover Version: "The Perfect Drug", "Walk with Me in Hell", and "Under a Serpent Sun".
- Deathcore: Started out as something of a split between the earliest bands in the genre and the more hardcore-oriented side before taking a more groove metal-oriented turn on Absolute Hope Absolute Hell, blending in elements of progressive metal, post-metal, and melodic hardcore by The Great Collapse.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: The Process of Human Extermination was far more stripped-down and more grindy and breakdown-laden than anything that followed, as well as having more prominent mathcore elements and none of the prog elements that started to infiltrate their sound on Hellbound. In short, it was fairly close to the sound of Nate Johnson's previous bands (particularly Deadwater Drowning, which Seth Coleman was also in), albeit with certain more modern (for the time) sensibilities. The band doesn't hate it, but they also feel that it has no relevance in their current era, and the last track that they had been consistently playing ("The Jackal") has not been touched in over a year.
- Gaia's Lament: The core lyrical themes on The Great Collapse onward.
- Genre-Busting: The Joe Badolato-era material has become increasingly hard to classify due to the way it mixes elements of deathcore, groove metal, progressive metal, post-metal, mathcore, and melodic hardcore. While still typically called deathcore, the accuracy of such a label is tenuous at best, and the band has indicated a general unwillingness to apply any sort of genre label to themselves.
- Genre Throwback: "Shepherd" was (as per
Word of God) explicitly written in the style of early 2000s melodic death metal/metalcore, with a sound comparable to acts like Darkest Hour, The Year of Our Lord, and Beyond the Embrace.- "Hellions" was written in the style of their earlier material circa Hellbound.
- Groove Metal: Absolute Hope Absolute Hell onward.
- Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow: Blue.
- Hollywood New England: Blue lives in Massachusetts and is a major figure in the New England metal and hardcore scenes, while Nate Johnson and Seth Coleman are from New Hampshire; furthermore, New England was where much of their early fame was cultivated (primarily through their regular appearances at the Palladium, Rocko's, and the Waterfront Tavern). In general, they are as much a New England band as they are a New Jersey band.
- I Am the Band: Will Putney is the sole writer (though the others make inputs and Josean adds his own feel and inflections to the drum tracks) and tracked all strings save for the leads up until 2019, when Blue started tracking his own bass.
- Lyrical Cold Open:
- "WE'LL TEAR THIS WHOLE FUCKING WORLD APART!"
- "DEAD IN THE DIRT!"
- "PUT ME IN THE FUCKING GROUND!"
- "I WATCHED A MAN DIE IN THE COLD!"note
- "DO YOU FEEL NUMB?"
- Metal Scream: Nate Johnson was somewhere between a Type 1 and a Type 2, Greg Wilburn was a Type 3 with extremely distinctive Type 2 lows, and Joe Badolato is a solid Type 1 who can pull off Type 2s, but only does so on Nate's songs.
- New Sound Album:
- Hellbound was significantly more technical and featured more varied compositions.
- Absolute Hope Absolute Hell was a Genre Shift to a more groove metal-influenced style with noticeable Progressive Metal elements.
- The Great Collapse took the progressive and post-metal influences present on Absolute Hope Absolute Hell and placed them up front and center for a more melodic and atmospheric album with little of the chugging of their earlier works, and created the modern Fit for an Autopsy sound.
- Nice Guy: Sheridan has gained renown for being incredibly kind-hearted, particularly for having helped a Black woman stuck in the middle of a highway with no gas. Said woman has then publicized the band on her Twitter as a thank you gift.
- Pintsized Powerhouse: Josean Orta.
- Progressive Metal: They have had significant elements of this starting with The Great Collapse, though they had shades of this as early as Hellbound (namely "Still We Destroy" and "Tremors", which really were not that far from the Joe Badolato era stylistically).
- Record Producer: Will Putney is a fairly famous one, but his stacked schedule is the reason why he does not play shows with the band.
- Revolving Door Band: They have gone through a fairly large amount of lineup changes in the eleven years that they've been around, though one of them (Nate Johnson) could have been seen a mile away by anyone familiar with his tendency to abruptly leave bands.
- Soprano and Gravel: Badolato uses cleans intermittently, though they became more frequent on The Great Collapse.
- Special Guest: CJ McMahon, Vincent Bennett, Brook Reeves (Impending Doom), Danny Leal (Upon a Burning Body), Nate Rebolledo (Xibalba), Brendan Murphy (Counterparts), and Kevin McCaughey (Ion Dissonance) have all done guest vocal spots, and this was also most likely Greg Wilburn's role (they may have originally been eyeing a full-time spot for him but wanted to test the waters, or they may have just been waiting until a vocalist who was more suitable for the band came along; either way, he didn't work out). Lastly, Matt Guglielmo was a session drummer on Oh What the Future Holds, as Josean Orta was recovering from surgery at the time of recording.
- Start My Own: They started out as Will Putney taking a crack at starting a band instead of just producing them. Subverted with Nate Johnson's involvement; while he was fresh out of Since the Flood and still had Buckhunter (which played a few shows a year, never went further than Rhode Island, and barely ever left New Hampshire to begin with, so they barely count), his involvement in their formation was relatively minimal. This was also how Will Putney's career as a producer started; he began as an assistant at Gene "Machine" Freeman's studio, made a name for himself with his work on No Time to Bleed, then went off to start his own studio at the beginning of the 2010s and quickly became a famous and in-demand producer in his own right.
- True Companions: With Thy Art Is Murder, as Will Putney has produced, recorded, mixed, and mastered every album starting with Hate, and the two will jump at every chance they have to tour together.
