Let me tell you how good of a band GRAVE is; They’re the kind of catchy, nasty, no-frilly laces Swedish Death Metal that almost made me want to go to the MORBID ANGEL/DARK FUNERAL show just to witness live. I very well could have, but I must be conservative with money, you see. GRAVE’s running not only on ten full-length albums, but associations with other legendary Swedeath bands like THERION (old, of course), ENTOMBED, and THE PROJECT HATE, MCMXCIX, so yes, they have what may be called a career. Look ‘em up on LinkedIn. The question that arises is, how does Endless Procession Of Souls measure up to everything else in the Death Metal scene after existing for over a quarter of a century? It pains me to say it’s quite underwhelming.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a decent album, packed to the bursting point with groovy headbangers, pooka-pooka-pooka circle pit bits, and classic slowdowns that will get a good zombie mosh going. Though these elements are used well by guys who clearly know their craft, they almost seem to be resting on their laurels and not trying their best anymore. For the first song or three, you’re finger-drumming along and whatnot, clearly diggin’ where it’s going, but by them time you’ve reached “Flesh Epistle”, you’re already wishing they’d either try something different or just begin eating each other. One hearkens back to the Into The Grave, where they simply blazed through the album in an idiotic brutal frenzy, armed with can-of-bees production and guitars that sounded like gore-soaked chainsaws, or Fiendish Regression, which saw them move in a slightly different direction from the standard Swedeath sound, while still maintaining what made GRAVE entertaining. Now, it just feels like something’s missing. Something that could ideally turn just another Swedish Death Metal album into a masterpiece that would re-claim their spot on the throne as the kings of all that is ugly in Sweden.
One glaring weakness is the vocals. Where the fuck did the intensity run off to? I’m guessing it was stolen by Travis Ryan of CATTLE DECAPITATION fame. While I’m not one to trash bands, AUTOPSY’s vocals, as far as I have been exposed to them, grate on my senses, and I feel like even I could have done a better job at the mic. GRAVE, while they’ve never had a bad vocal performance as far as I’m concerned, have done much better in the past, and it begs the question as to why Ola decided to neuter himself with the standard everyman style of Swedish Death Metal vocals that you’d probably hear on an UNLEASHED record. Speaking of UNLEASHED, they get dangerously close to sounding like them on this record. UNLEASHED does what they do best, which is writing and playing songs about Vikings, war, Norse mythology, and evil stuff, who knows, really. GRAVE is just supposed to be all about death and rotting stuff. While the music is not entirely unsuitable for a zombie invasion (though I’d personally pick a better album that Endless Procession), the lyrics could easily be swapped out with nothing but tank bombardments and trench warfare. Not only is the music and atmosphere created uninspired, but they insist on using the same songwriting techniques over and over and over. How many times can you have every instrument cut out aside from the guitars to segue into a Thrashy part, or have a slowdown section with a random solo over it, or recycle the same punky Swedeath section that we all know by heart with a slightly different SLAYER police siren solo over it? Not enough times, if you ask GRAVE. The highlights are few and far between, but the straight up Thrash section in “Perimortem”, as well as the consistently Doom-tinged crawl of the closing track “Epos” are welcome change-ups from the endless procession of tired riffing and cut’n’paste drum patterns from the Swedish Death Metal handbook. While it’s still a well-produced bit of face-ripping from a band that was crucial in inventing the formula, the mediocre outweighs the good.
The Verdict: It would be better with fresh ideas, more gore, and a production that made it sound like it was recorded in a tin shack dripping with fungus.
Metal sometimes takes a perverse sort of pleasure in watching its old guard falter and flail. The modern age of snark has us zeroing in with predator-like tenacity on the excess rolls of flab, the off-stage stumbles, and the off-cue albums of an artist’s latter years. That’s what we’re here for, right? To keep god-sized egos in check and remind everyone that musicians didn’t descend from Mount Olympus to rule over the earth with hammer, sword, and fist, they came from their parents’ garage, and are always one false step from heading straight back to it. However, there is no such pleasure in saying that MASTER, one of the venerable founders of Old-School Death Metal as we know it alongside MANTAS/DEATH and POSSESSED, has, Paul Speckmann forgive me, made an absolute bore of an album in The New Elite.
This album has all the hallmarks of D-Beat Proto-Death metal and primitive death/thrash crossover, and that’s not a problem. People live and die by that old school gallop, and it’s a certainty die hard MASTER fans will continue to do so no matter what any review says. Such is the nature of the back-patched crusty old school loyalist. The problem is that those same elements are repeated, much in the same way, throughout the entirety of The New Elite. The formula goes like this: D-beat infused Thrash intro and verse, perhaps a blast here and there, chorus, whammy bar solo bridge, chorus, a bit more d-beat inspired death thrash, and out. Repeat. Speckmann still has his trademark strained high end/mid-range vocal growl working well, and his lyrics are as angry and reality-based as they’ve ever been. He hasn’t gone soft, not by a long shot, he’s just made a comfort zone album full of clichéd titles such as “Rise Up and Fight,” “As Two Worlds Collide,” “Twist of Fate,” and “Out of Control” that are themselves filled with predictable progressions and solos from the tremolo bar academy of KERRY KING. The drummer stays in his wheelhouse from start to finish like he has a bad case of agoraphobia. It’s almost enough to make one check the play list to make sure it wasn’t accidentally set on repeat. From a man and a band that has give the world so much classic Death Metal over the years, it’s a disappointment, to say the least. The passion is there, but the delivery misses the mark by a wide margin, making for material better suited for a stop-gap disc or a collection of unreleased b-sides.
No one ever expected MASTER to be technical, and no one ever asked them to step outside the old school death metal box they helped create. But there’s a world of difference between keeping to a formula and wearing it out with needless, thoughtless repetition. There’s also a world of difference between relying on one’s strengths and turning those strengths into weaknesses by virtue of whipping them out every five seconds for all to bask in their rapidly waning glory. Is the entire album so similar that one song is nigh indistinguishable from the next? Almost. It wouldn’t be the least bit surprising to learn that this was an album on which the writing process was described as being incredibly smooth and quick—almost too easy in fact. It’s as though the band members got stuck in a particularly good DISCHARGE and EXPLOITED-laden old school death metal groove one day and banged out all these tunes in one shot, and were so excited at their unprecedented level of productivity that they simply decided to record all those songs as they were without actually listening to the playback once or twice first. No one can take MASTER’s place among the death metal elite, and one sleeper of an album isn’t enough to knock the band out of the Pantheon, but file this one under a career misstep for one of death metal’s founding fathers. Here’s to genuine hope against hope that the band is more thoughtful and successful the next time out.
MASTER: We still love you, even when you miss the mark, badly.
In a perfect world DYING FETUS would be a much bigger band than they are. Granted they didn’t pick a moniker when they were starting out based on commercial viability. Still, I used to get mad years ago when I would meet some fellow metal heads and they didn’t know this band to be one of the leaders of all of death metal. In the years that have passed since then DYING FETUS has continued to stay consistent and make great music, despite having to watch other bands rise in popularity, headline festivals and sell more records. Not that the band gives two shits about that either. They just do what they do year after year: they make some of the best, most brutal music on the planet.
I first heard “Invert The Idols” on the bands’ spring tour and it blew me away with it’s sick musician ship and speed. Consider this is one of the best bands in the genre and fast what they do naturally, and that prior statements gets some context. Right off the bat the production sounds miles better than their last album, which sounded pretty good. The drums sit in the pocket with all the sick vocals while guitar and bass sound evenly balanced and clear. Many death metal bands prefer crude production, but I have always appreciate that the FETUS guys are musicians who care about the how their albums sound. The opening sweep picking riff will take the wind out of you while you try to process it. The song is blisteringly fast and over in a blink at just over two minutes. Similarly “Subject to a Beating” is another mind-blowing blast-beat laden romp. This time both John Gallagher and Sean Beasley share the vocal leads and compliment each other like never before. They both veer back and forth between the growled indecipherable vocals and then clearer, understandable ones. Mostly, they use their voices as extra instruments like many vocalists in the style. Some of the riffs on the album pack in all types of scales and licks performed with a precision not usually possible at these inhuman speeds. Prog is not a word I tend to think of when discussing this band, but there are definite proggy moments on this album. As a trio they have never backed down from being great players. “Second Skin” is another fast crusher that has elements of music beyond standard death metal styles. This album has some excellent groove parts on it too, which the band hasn’t over-used like just about every other band. “From Womb to Waste” begins with what is surely the sample of 2012: “It’s not my fault I’m pregnant and I love drugs. Who cares? Fuck the baby. Let it die!”. The grinding beat of the song and the mean riffs give it a sinister, eerie effect. Drummer Trey Williams has been at the forefront of death drummers for ages, but doesn’t often get mentioned in the year end lists. He is tight at any tempo and whether it is using choice fills on slow beats or insanely fast parts, he is as strong on record as he is live. “Dissidence” sounds awesome with its manic opening and both vocalists unleashing a howling scream. The song is more like a classic FETUS cut, when they were a little more hardcore influenced (don’t you dare call it deathcore). I love the head-nodding beat and the straight up chord changes too. “In the Trenches” is similar to start out with a straight a head chug. Gallagher puts together one of the best guitar performances of any album this year. “Devout Atrocity” again makes with the acrobatic riffs and scales. The fact that Beasley not only can keep up, but holds his own in the bass department is admirable. There is a neat stomp-groove part that recalls both OBITUARY and BOLT THROWER at one point, both key influences on the band. Gallagher opens “Revisionist Past” with a sick lead guitar solo before the preposterous tempo kicks in and the song becomes a gnarly blur. I can’t wait to see the YouTube videos popping up for bands trying to play this one! The final song is “The Blood Of Power” and is a fitting end to such a great album. The song has bits of everything that makes them great, including more stellar axe work. Underrated no more, DYING FETUS has ascended the mantle of the greats of death metal, whether the average fan knows it or not.
If you are still sleeping on DYING FETUS, just kill yourself.
Well, it’s old school death metal from Sweden, but not really old school Swedish death metal. Well, there is a little old school Swedish death metal involved on Sleepers in the Rift, the debut album from Morbus Chron, mainly a bit of the smoke-billowing locomotive tempos and the odd slam-chug. Otherwise, this one is about the kind of gnarly, mucked up death metal that was around just past the genre’s late 80s infancy stage and maybe a wee bit of the era just past the ’90 mark, like when the Swedish baby bands were riding the Autopsy train for all it was worth.
In other words, much of Sleepers in the Rift crosses a whole lot of Autopsy murder muck with Scream Bloody Gore era Death and some Death Strike slam-bams. You’ll be damned at how convincing it all sounds. Vomited death grunts and semi-shout derangement flies over top some seriously chewy riffs, plenty of neck-wrecking tempo shifts, and most simply some super cool “parts,” as represented by “Ways of Torture” and “Dead Body Pile Necrophile,” both of which feature innards-ripping solos. The latter also happens to be the most memorable track on an album that suffers just a pinch from track-distinction issues. It is a minor complaint at best and one of questionable significance at that, considering all the beautiful ugliness and numerous moments of horns-throwing, head-banging, warm-beer puking moments. There is far too much death of orgasmic appeal going on here to bother with such quibbling anyway.
We’re talking Death Strike/Master bashing on “Red Hook Horror,” superb doom-to-death alternating on “Lidless Coffin” (not to mention that wicked swirling lick), and all kinds of discordance and two-beat Hell galloping on “Deformation of the Dark Matter.”And who better to produce all this racket than former Entombed deathster Nicke Andersson. It does make sense, doesn’t it? All in all, some pretty damn solid material.
Rating: B
Scott Alisoglu
Not to be confused with the bizarre Aussie black metal contingent with which this Washington band shares their album title, Infernal Legion go far out of their way to prove that American death metal can indeed provide plenty of original and, of course, brutal thrills for a discerning metal audience.
Bursting out through the starting gate with a bright and energetic production, the guitars here on The Spear of Longinus practically possess the listener with a frenetic fury; harboring a Bolt Thrower bluster while also nodding firmly in the direction of America’s own Immolation in term of complex, Satanically oriented arrangement. What separates Infernal Legion from many of their peers, however, is the inclusion of demonic melody in the mix.
The guitars of Doug Stern and Eric Armstrong are very much in psychic tune with each other, ripping out memorable melodies with as much ease as they do kill-riffs du jour. The effect overall is somewhat similar to the Southern death squadron of Arghoslent, in that these melodic sections campaign with a vicious sense of pride and epic glory. In other words: don’t think Gothenburg. Instead, Infernal Legion manage to sound just as well put together as their European countrymen, while also possessing the intense, berserk rage of America’s most lethal death metal tendencies.
With Reduced to Sludge, the New York/Pennsylvanian death metal collective known as Funerus have seriously upped the creative ante, compared to their Festering Earth debut.
The band-which features in their ranks Mortician drummer Sam Inzerra, Ibex Moon/Incantation guitarist John McEntee, and his wife Jill on bass and vocals-effortlessly kick out the Swedish-inspired death metal jams, amped up with some American-styled brutality for good measure. The dark, wretched atmosphere is particularly choking and thick here on Reduced to Sludge, with more focus placed upon arrangements and morbid melodies to counteract the churning riffage and simplistic, yet driving drumming.
Jill McEntee’s hoarse, brutal growl is commendable in its clarity and force, possessing enough charisma to lead her husband’s deadly axe assault in songs like “Bedpan Commando” and “Leatherface.” While Funerus is strictly average when it comes to overall attack, this no frills dedication to the old school nevertheless comes across as honest and direct; a fitting tribute to when the art of death was neither complex nor overly technical, but a heads-down, serious-as-a-heart-attack assault to the senses.
As such, Reduced to Sludge succeeds in exactly the fashion it sets out, while simultaneously making Festering Earth sound like a demo-styled warm up in comparison. Definitely recommended to the death diehards out there.
While it seems that every other day we get some sort of ‘new old school’ death metal band to review here at Metal Army HQ, we’re not really gonna complain all to much when the feeling is so legit and ugly as it is here with Tormented’s debut, Rotten Death.
Then again, it all really makes sense given the heritage lineup contained here within the Tormented nucleus. When you have former Edge of Sanity, Marduk and Infestdead axeman Andreas ‘Dread’ Axelsson manning the show, the riff arsenal is clearly in good hands. Add in to the mix Scar Symmetry and Facebreaker sceamer Roberth Karlsson on the low end, and what you have it two Swe-death lifers making sure that Rotten Death sounds as dirty ‘n mean as possible.
Gobs of crust and thrash influence permeate their way through Tormented’s filthy riff attack, while Axelsson’s unholy howl spits out shout-a-long chorus about life, death…and all the nastiness in between. Sure, there’s nothing new about Rotten Death or how it echoes the very best of 90s Stockholm death metal…but who cares? When the end result is this aggressively awesome, you’ll be too busy banging right along to care very much about the originality factor.
As if the Nicke Andersson production credit wasn’t proof enough on this bad boy, Morbus Chron’s Sleepers in the Rift debut assaults the listener right from the get go with truly horrific sounding riffage; the likes of which probably haven’t been heard from a ‘new’ old school death metal band since Bloodbath or Death Breath came on the scene.
That’s a raging compliment, by the way, since this Stockholm quartet are extremely likely to blow away the entire underground any day now, once the untamed savagery of Sleepers emerges from its flimsy cage. Encapsulating the most base and fervent of underground death mania, Sleepers evokes blood-stained memories of every classic death metal analogy imaginable, from Autopsy’s miserable churl to Entombed’s brilliant battering ram of carnage.
The atmospheric psychosis of early Morbid Angel is also prevalent within Morbus Chron’s angular guitar attack, even if the album’s opening track ‘Coughing In a Coffin’ shamelessly-or rather reverently-rips off the Phantasm theme to wondrous effect. Bottom line is that Morbus Chron are steadily headed for ‘debut of the year’ with Sleepers in the Rift; a frankly amazing record which, although breaking no new ground per se, still manages to blow nearly every new band of their ilk out of the proverbial water. This is sheer dedication to the metal of death, deserving of praise and worship from new and old schoolers alike. Completely killer.
Although Finland’s Decaying seem to have all their papers in order when it comes to old school, dyed-in-the-wool death metal worship, the thin production and clicky, mechanical drums do quite a bit to castrate the obvious power lurking withing the band’s songwriting.
It seems as if Decaying knew this already, as the band seem to have enlisted the services of a real drummer for future recordings. This is a very good thing, for Devastate is otherwise on target when it comes to balancing Bolt Thrower and Asphyx styled blast with the simplified and straight forward attack of vintage Stockholm Swe-death like Grave or early Tiamat.
Yes, that trudging doom style of Sumerian Cry is here in full effect, as is the screaming guitars and deep, hollow-sounding vocals so intrinsic to this genre’s success. I can almost taste how much the band’s sophomore effort is bound to improve upon this template contained within Devastate, especially if Decaying can enlist a producer who can lift the band’s arrangements with a thick ‘n massive production.
Unfortunately for Decaying, that will be their second album. As it stands now, Devastate only hints loud and clear the promise which lies beneath the surface. Bring on the real drums, and we should see some wicked improvement. Looking forward to it.
Given the wide variety of acts with which the members of Denmark’s The Cleansing have played over the course-a number which include death/thrashers Sacrificial, death stalwarts Iniquity and melodic death metal madmen Mercenary, among many others-it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to hear how Feeding the Inevitable stacks up against its creators’ respective musical heritage.
The Cleansing certainly aren’t your average, every day deathcore flop or fly-by-night tech sensation, but rather a heads-down, simple-but-effective squad whose sole aims are to kill and crush. In this, The Cleansing succeeds, albeit in a very basic manner, taking all of death metal’s truest and most tried elements, and bringing them all to the table.
Very few marks can be laid against The Cleansing when it comes to performance, as well: the guitar work of Jeppe Hasseriis and Andreas Lynge doesn’t rely on any one trick for too often, varying nicely between hyper blasts and slow, menacing churns. The balance of death metal’s destructive past and unpredictable future is also nicely balanced, with particular emphasis placed upon a tasteful yet aggressive lead style which pushes Feeding the Inevitable firmly above the ‘average’ marker for all but the most discerning metaller.
While still a niche act at heart, The Cleansing deliver their brutal goods with honesty a drive; something which can’t always be said for many of their younger peers these days. For this alone, Feeding the Inevitable is worth checking out for those who yearn for a lesson in violence.
