Entombed - Left Hand Path
Review: An early death metal band that utilized the blistering electric guitar roar of the Swedish style to make tremelo melody streaming in the architectural riff sculpting that is the defining trait of metal music, Entombed thrust their hybrid of heavy metal/death metal to its extreme with a shredding fast and percussively excessive album that creates atmosphere in the resonant textures of riff progressions (a similar technique to that of Discharge) in order to bowl them over with a domino effect of similar structures collapsing in sequence.
Riffs are basic shards of motion joined by momentum as rhythms converging on a tone of neutrality or resolution, slamming through extension phrasing of even or chromatic intervals for recursion, indulging several speeds of double picking including a redline strum of humming, resonant hatred; power chords are done in the death metal style of a few essential shapes but mostly standard form. Lead riffing laces melody in a stream of singular notes through the charging rhythm section and associates tone with emphasis in shape, while lead soloing angles around points of harmonic significance to background riffing and provides a resonant space of interaction.
Thematic in the simplest sense, these songs loop through a series of riff progressions to support anthemic verse/chorus alteration and will then break for devolution or exegesis of narrative, for the most part following the Slayer style of riffs introduced by transitions and repeated in layers to break to final chorus development. Hardcore influences in the pulsing rhythm and broad tonal jumps of these long power chord phrases, hearkening back to a previous generation, with rock influences taken into account recall the convergence of ideas that formed the death metal genre.
Of savage and violent tension and blasting focal buildup, these songs are epic and defining for their era of the evolution of metal yet speak consistently to the cause and inspiration of the same, fomenting the immediate identification this band has among fans even after several albums outside the death metal genre. For influential vision and infectious energy these dark tapestries are immersion in the nihilism of death metal.