County Medical Examiners

The County Medical Examiners (also known as TCME) are an American goregrind and death metal band who, in their own words, exist for the sole purpose of recreating the sound of early Carcass albums. The band's original line up consisted of Dr. Morton Fairbanks on guitar/vocals, Dr. Jack Putnam drums/vocals and Michelle Hayes bass/vocals. Michelle Hayes was, according to Dr. Fairbanks in an old interview on thecountymedicalexaminers.com, first exposed to the band when she toured a morgue, where Dr. Fairbanks worked, as part of her probation due to a DUI charge. It was soon after this meeting that all three got together and recorded the EP Fetid Putrescent Whiffs which saw limited release. A short while later the band recorded their debut full length for Razorback Records entitled Forensic Fugues and Medicolegal Medleys. Not long after the albums release Michelle left the band to devote her time to medical school. Being short a bassist Dr. Fairbanks enlisted the help of friend and colleague Dr. Guy Radcliffe. It is interesting to note that Dr. Radcliffe joined the band not because he liked metal or Carcass but because of his love for the avant-garde. The current line-up went on to record a split LP, an EP and their second full length album Olidous Operettas. Much controversy surrounds the identity of the band members, as they use pseudonyms (their real last names first and their mothers maiden names last)[citation needed] to avoid the wrath of hospital administration and fan attention. One rumor suggests that TCME contains at least one member of Exhumed, mostly because the domain name for the band's website was registered by a former member of Exhumed, and not under the name of the "band members," but it's now commonly accepted that TCME, being uninterested in their online promotion, have many people behind the scenes--including various other Carcass clone bands, as well as Relapse Records staff--donating their time to web design and promotion, as well as guest musical appearances. TCME released their Relapse Records debut, Olidous Operettas, January, 23, 2007 The CD, which took them more than a year and a half to write and record, since all three bandmembers live in different states, features eight tracks, including "Morgagnic Anatomics," "The Virchow Postmortem Procedure" and "Maturating Decompositional Gas." Dr. Fairbanks described the effort as "somewhere between Symphonies of Sickness and Necroticism-era Carcass" and "not something you would want to put on before church." What makes the disc even more distinctive, beyond TCME's odd approach to making music is "It will be a scented-face CD, which essentially means it will be scratch and sniff-able," he said. "Our CD will smell like rotten meat."