In the year 2000 Earache have finally reissued this classic album. For those not in the know, Carnage was an old Swedish death metal band, which featured some members of Dismember as well as the future member of Carcass Michael Amott. The band lived and died long before Gothenburgh metal became a household name, before the definition of NWMSDM was coined, and before the advent of dozens of clone bands content with endlessly copying one another. Yes, times do change, but the legacy of the pioneering warriors still remains, and that's why this one is such a classic. File next to early Dismember, early Entombed, Grotesque and other late 80's/early 90's Swedish death metal. This is raw, crude, no-frills death metal assault from start to finish, and it's fucking great at that. As Michael Amott states in the liner notes, "death metal was never meant to be pretty, baby!" Something many Swedish bands seem to forget these days. Besides the remastered version of Carnage's only full-length album, the disc includes tracks from two of their demos, so it looks like the band's entire recorded output was gathered here, which is, once again, great. A very fine piece of death metal history it is.

© 2002 boris