Dismember is dead, Fred Estby was d-beaten to the cross, and not even Dave Blomqvist can sweep away these recent Swedish metal sins.
Black Breath – Heavy Breathing (2010), Sentenced to Life (2012), Slaves Beyond Death (2015)
Smegma crust derivative deathcore. There’s sludge in here too as this was released by Southern Lord, the idiots who brought us Kim Kelly Kore like Nails and Wolves in the Throne Room. No Swedes are spared by these gang rapists. Black Breath even spread apart the cheeks and felch the fecal matter from Wolverine Blues’ asshole. Listening to any of their releases is hearing them play metal hot potato by passing around that firm bowel movement mouth to mouth like a mother bird feeding her babies. Black Breath lick that shit up and down to get the turd glisteningly slick before shoving it up Kim Kelly’s meat-hooked Hellraiser cunt. From there it will be squeezed out like soft serve ice cream for Pitchfork and Vice’s hipster cones.
Demonical – Black Flesh Redemption (2015)
Demonical wants to play with the big boys. They have Boss HM-2 pedals and riffs Dismember rejected when writing the not-so-classic Death Metal. What they don’t have is any idea of how to write an adequate death metal song; these guys can’t even hammer out an effective two and a half minute verse chorus verse thrash basher. The four tracks each attempt to pander to a different lowest common denominator metal audience with their individual use of breakdowns, doomy interludes, and cheesy keyboards. The rhythm guitars take a backseat to the cheesy Amon Amarth vocalizations. There is about a minute of semi-enjoyable generic material on this record.. Snort the line of borax on the floor failure.
Entrails – Obliteration (2015)
Three strikes is life in many states. Singapore will hang anyone who walks off a plane with enough junk. Medieval England executed children caught stealing anything worth more than two loaves of bread; mercy meant limbs lopped off. This is Entrails’ fourth offense. These recidivists need to overdose in a Cambodian shack on a cocktail of liquor, Valium, and chloroquine.
Interment – Into the Crypts of Blasphemy (2010)
Yet another fourth rate band from the early nineties finally recorded an album. The songs are again dick beat punk and the metal riffs were pilfered from Entombed and Carnage. Just like Entrails no label gave these fools money to record an album back in 1993 for good reason. Now that they’re adults with jobs, this garage band can afford studio time to bore us. Interment need to quit trying to live out their delusional teenage heavy metal dreams and spend time with their kids on weekends.
Verminous – The Unholy Communion (2013)
Verminous return with more punk rock masquerading as death metal. More bouncy hardcore riffs, more lame samples, and more gang chants. Whatever catchy riffs are on this CD are quickly worn out through strict verse chorus verse pop punk structures that make three minute long songs drag. I want to throw it at a homeless person. The lyrical themes are inconsistent too. Pop Satanism? Okay. Bukkake? Barbatos? Verminous are the Blink-182 of Svensk Döds Metall. Repeatedly listening to The Unholy Cumunion is equivalent to fucking your girlfriend wearing a used condom picked up off the sidewalk.
Drowned – Idola Specus (2014)
Soulside Journey simplified into pop music. Drowned grokked the underground’s current nostalgia for the early nineties and rehashed a beloved classic into an easily digestible rock format. Pointless introductions and incongruent atmospheric verses are thrown in to appease doom halfwits and bore everyone else. Darkthrone is being bowdlerized for hipsters just as early rock ‘n’ roll whitewashed rhythm and blues for suburban teenagers. Truly Katy Perry death metal.
Tribulation – Children of the Night (2015)
Tribulation first moved from Grotesque and Merciless worship to Rust in Peace meets Queensrÿche on The Formulas of Death. Children of the Night abandons metal altogether, becoming Moog synth laden regressive goth rock. Tribulation aren’t horror score Goblin now; Tribulation are strict, just out of the closet Lestat cosplayers. Where are the clean vocal hooks for the Cradle of Filth faggots? How the hell are Tribulation supposed to get into Hot Topic next to Deafheaven? They need to put away the Vampire Diaries, pull the buttplugs out of their rectums, and hire a real singer. Then go to Safeway, buy four gallons of bleach, and chug them like forties in the parking lot. That will clean out Tribulation’s gastrointestinal tracts.
Ghost – Meliora (2015)
Repugnant failed miserably at death metal. Now Repugnant fail miserably at Duran Duran. Ghost have no musical influences from Blue Öyster Cult or Mercyful Fate; rather they play vocal pop with occasional speed metal riffs. Pop music centered around singing that makes Dave Mustaine sound like Ronnie James Dio. This has to be trolling: the vocalist sounds like Seth Putnam on Anal Cunt’s indie wuss rock parody Picnic of Love; grown men are playing dress up pseudo-metal like little girls having a Satanic tea party. Tobias Forge should lick lead paint chips off the floor and bash his brains out in the back of a police van.
Cut Up – Forensic Nightmares (2015)
Cut Up? What kind of lazy band name is that? What happened to metal bands whose names actually referenced death? Treblinka? Autopsy? Immolation? Cut Up wondered what Dismember meant and looked it up in the dictionary. “What does Dismember mean bro?” “It means to cut people up.” Cut Up cuts up old death metal riff phrases into licks and rearranges them into death ‘n’ roll forensic nightmares. Songs are structured like Cannibal Corpse filtered through the randomness of metalcore. Ample slams and breakdowns disorient into a brain cell holocaust. The target audience is those australopithecines who believe death metal a more extreme version of beatdown hardcore. Go cut up your vegetables.
Dismember : Lethal Weapon :: Cut Up : Samurai Cop minus the amusing bits
Tags: 2015, black breath, cut up, death metal, demonical, drowned, entrails, failure, ghost, interment, provocative, sadistic metal reviews, Swedeath, tribulation, verminous
“Into The Crypts Of Blasphemy” is ‘okay’, mainly because of the re-recordings of two older songs wich I would rate as above average. The new songs are mostly boring. Overall the album is not as revolting as the other stuff listed above.
From what you said, it sounds like Evocation’s first album. Some great songs left over from their ’90s demos, and a whole bunch of boring. Pass.
At least Interment haven’t plagued us with increasingly intolerable followups like Evocation have.
The first Evocation album has only one re-recorded song on it and it really isn’t that good. There is also a cover version of “But Life Goes On”, the others are/were new songs. For me they sound like they want to appeal to listeners of old school Swedish death metal (the simple kind), fans of “Slaughter Of The Soul” and a modern ‘metal’ audience that favours metalcore over death metal. Hence they took a safe patchwork approach for their songwriting. You are right to point out how bad their other albums are: in the end – their Century Media debut – they became a completely intolerable copy of some of the worst Gothenburg ‘metal’.
Anything can be quantified nowadays. This is what Operation Vice-Wave and the creation of the Kim Kelly AI program was designed to prove. These musicians were given the freedom to record music, and this is what they produce: sonic, brain numbing hugbox rhetoric to save us all from “hurt” and “critical thinking” – producing a new socio-political “music culture” where no one is invalidated, but no one is right. A world where everyone can retreat to the safety of their insular communities and make Xasthur albums for each other without considering the broader forum of human culture. This is the hipster metal ideology. Should people like that have freedom? Should people like that even have the freedom to argue for their freedom? They abused their freedom by making this music. They don’t deserve to be free! I will pin down the body of any hipster and violently sodomize the filth from their depraved minds. Thank you for your time.
Aevangelist is a joke! Who these poofters blowing for gigs? http://youtu.be/ui0HRd_qHf8
Some friends recommended Aevangelist but I haven’t heard anything from them that is actually good. Dark sounds and saxophones — it’s only a matter of time until they come out with maroon Aevangelist fedoras.
What the fuck fuck????
No Cruciamentum?
No Slayer?
No Symphony X?
No Stormhammer?
What is the same about all of the bands reviewed here? They’re Swedish or play Swedeath!
Internment’s second and third demos are pretty great stuff. If I’d been older than four when they came out, and I’d owned a label, I would have put money up for a full-length back in the day. I don’t really have any interest in their post-reformation stuff though. I’ve been burned pretty hard by newer Uncanny and newer Evocation, who went from cool demos (and even a great full-length in the case of Uncanny) to mid-life crisis-core as soon as they got back together.
The Tribulation album is particularly terrible. Amazing how “progression” for metal bands often means turning into stupid pop.
Time to throw out the rubbish.
How do people around here feel for D.R.I. – 4 of a Kind album?
Great. In many ways their best; a hybrid between their thrash and slower, blockier speed metal like Prong, Exodus (Impact is Imminent era) and Anthrax. “Man Unkind” may be my favorite from them. Listen to it back to back with “The Robots” (Kraftwerk) for that reality-shifting-under you feeling.
I agree with most of the above. Haven’t listened to Internment yet. Demonical have always striked me as plastic, saw them at MDF some years ago and something about them made me cringe. I saw Entrails at MDF 2014, while I did enjoy them, they weren’t exactly memorable.
Where I disagree is, that Repugnant did not fail at death metal. Epitome of Darkness may not be the most innovative death metal album ever, but it’s well executed Swedish death metal and among the best the new millennium has to offer. Repugnant do fall short when compared to ancient Swedish death metal masters like Nihilist/early Entombed, Carnage/early Dismember, Merciless, Treblinka, Obscurity, Mefisto, Unleashed, Grave, etc. But Epitome of Darkness is a solid slab of modern day Swedish death. As for Ghost, that band is a complete failure even if they share members of Repugnant. Ghost are a horrid lame attempt at occult rock, Pink Floyd is more evil than them. I’m only disagreeing, I’m not gonna have a hipster like hissy fit over who likes Repugnant or who don’t.
Entrails was incredibly boring at 2014 MDF. God Macabre played an hour or two after them and just blew away all the parking lot bands as they were tight and had good sound. MDF is just a shitty festival with all the fucking poser bands and awful parking lot PA system with the cranked up subbass makes everything unlistenable; I had to go right up front to the side of the stage to get out of way of the PAs to actually hear Demilich this year. I mean 2016 has no intact good death metal bands. Satan and Exciter in a parking lot in Baltimore with shitty sound when both those bands played in the US last year at good venues? These are the idiots who stuck Bolt Thrower in a tent.
Repugnant wasn’t really even Swedeath; they were more a death thrash band armed with HM-2 pedals that couldn’t get their act together. The album just isn’t in the same league as the last Grave or Dismember’s NWOBHM infused “The God that Never Was”
God Macabre was definitely one of highlights that year and yes, much better than Entrails. Cancer was also good, but plagued by the shitty sound which probably wasn’t their fault. I just thought Entrails didn’t totally suck, but I wasn’t making them to be some great band by any means. MDF has booked many killer bands, but just as many if not more poser hipster bands. When the gay bands are playing it gives you time to go back to your hotel room and relax or to shop for merch. Yeah, the Edison lot sound can definitely use some improvement. Rams head has good sound though. I prefer the old sonar, MDF was more organized then, the parking lot is definitely shitty. The tent was definitely bullshit in 2013, it took away from Bolt Thrower and Abigail, I was watching both bands from the back of the tent as everyone was literally crammed in there and it was raining. Handled poorly to say the least. To top it all off Venom gets cut off right in the middle of their set. I plan on going next year for Exciter, Satan, Venom(should play a full set this time), Nocturnal Graves, Demonic Christ, Mystifier, Discharge(one of the few punk bands I actually like) and I guess a few bands I’ve already seen before haha. But yeah the bands would sound better in a proper venue as opposed to the parking lot. I do think a lot of up and coming fests like hells headbash(which I wish I was able to attend), Destroying Texas fest and defenders of the old can potentially blow MDF out of the water if they haven’t already.
Festivals reflect — or try to — their audience. If more people like nitwit metal than quality, the festival will need to have those nitwit bands or it will go bankrupt. An exception occurs where there are enough people who want good metal to be profitable and fill the venue. Then, appealing to nitwits is a nitwit thought process in itself. I imagine MDF finds it hard because the bands are now older, demand real money and travel expenses, which have only gotten higher as many of these bands are foreign and/or need more deluxe accommodations than 20-year-old newbies would demand.
The Beatles were eviler than Ghost.
I enjoy your comments here and in the spirit of mutual improvement add this for your fertile mind: if we content ourselves with something less than the highest level of the previous generation, are we evolving upward or downward?