Archives: Reviews

1 - Deformed 
                          2 - In Love 3 - For Your God 4 - Obscure Infinity 5 
                          - Hating Life 6 - Into the Grave 7 - Extremely Rotten 
                          Flesh 8 - Haunted 9 - Day of Mourning 10 - Inhuman 11 
                          - Banished to Live

No this time this is not a demo, and I also know

I have promised not to make reviews until the zine4

is out, but… I couldn’t really resist reviewing

this. I have heard some kids in town proclaiming

they like Swedish Death metal and when asked which

bends they preferred they say IN FLAMES and DARK

TRANQUILLITY. Ugh, what a fist in my oversized belly.

Well for those who like real Death Metal this album

should be the bible. My absolute favorite SDM album

aside with CARNAGE’s “Dark Recollections”

and DISMEMBER’s “Pieces” Ep, this album

is all but no-nonsense straight in your face BRUTAL-as-fuck

Death. Don’t listen to ppl suggesting you ENTOMBED’s

LEft Hand Path, becouse THIS is the ultimate in

violence among the legendary bands of ending eighties/beginning

nineties. Into the Grave is definitely GRAVE’s swangsong,

it is structurally perfect, and with a sound that

is exactly that of bones being crushed, the personal

trademark of the fabled Swedish sound taken to the

excess. Despite many of the bands back then used

to be raspy in their vocals, GRAVE had this particular

ultra-guttural approach, with massive, big sound

saturated with basses and a bit of evocative kb

in the title track (really genius stuff). Main this

that can be said about GRAVE to distinguish them

from the aforementioned and the likes of UNLEASHED,

HETSHEADS, NIHILIST a.s.o. is their sober, chunky

sound. Listening to this album really makes me clenching

the theet and close my fists, it really seeps HATE

from evey single riff. I am not going to discuss

much more, this is a classic beyond words. If you

don’t have it in your collection, you’re a cunt.

1 - Dismembered 
                        2 - Sickening Art 3 - Defective Decay

YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

This is THE DISMEMBER which made me wrap in leather, cover

in blood and headbang till death. The sound in this demo

is possibli the most rotting, bastard, deathish the band

ever had, except maybe for “Pieces”. No matter

how you see it, this demo is forcefully one of the best

demos ever recorded, if not the best Swedish death demo.

It has one step more speed and sheer energy than the debut

Lp, although the songs “Sickening Art” and “Dismembered”

are bubstantially identical, the sound is darker and the

vocals deeper, and the sick solos replaced by more straightforward

casual notes (eheh) and some effects likethe kayboards

in “Sickening Art” replaced by a short whining

sound.

“Defective Decay”, their watermark, is for the

scond time here, this time blessed by Matti’s outsanding

roars, some higher than the should be bass slaps, and

not a single veil of harmonizer as in the recent recordings.

The sludgy, rasping guitar sounds are vaguely GRAVEish

in impact and straight in your face force, but are characterized

by some absolutely DISMEMBER rhytmical, loose twists that

make ’em perfect for headbanging and acts of random vandalism.

This demo IS the demo you should hear. By the way, I have

seen some other copies later made by Nuclear Blast I suppose,

which actually had a light blue print on the tape and

on the cover. I haven’t heard them but I assume they’re

the same. This demo came in a blank tape and contained

Matti’s address (bid for it ehehe). At the time, I remember,

Nuclear Blast was publicizing it in their xeroxed, 4 sheet

catalogs (distant times uh?).

1 - Deathevokation 
                        2 - Substantially Dead 3 - Defective Decay

Great, great collector item I think, I haven’t really seen this demo much often even back at the beginning of the Death

Metal phenomenon: this bands even precedes what later

was to become CARNAGE and then reformed with more or less

the actual line up. The singer in this demo was named

Robban (same Robban who also playerd in CARNAGE). Anyway

the demo starts with the infamous track “Deathevokation”

which was later recorded in CARNAGE’s masterpiece debut

(and only) Lp on Necrosis and subsequently as a bonus

track in the mini-lp “Pieces” which the band

recorded to promote their US tour with PESTILENCE. Still

a three piece made up of this Robban, Fred Estby and David

Blomqvist, I can only guess how young they were when they

recorded this demo, but the song is a bit loose, not even

fairly as distorted as their characteristical Swedish

sound demanded later. Vocals are hissing and high pitched,

sort of BATHORY-like but once you surpass the first approach,

they’re good, although not OUTSTANDING as those of Matti

in this period. After an unreleased track called “Substantially

Dead”, which is fast but a bit repetitive, the demo

ends with “Defective Decay” (I know this song

has been lately added to “Like An Everflowing Stream”

as a bonus track, with heavily harmonized vocals). Although

way simpler, this demo was malign and genuine, and I still

love to hear it sometimes, especially if you consider

that DISMEMBER has remained my favourite band ever at

least until they recorded the great delusion “Casket

Garden”. Recorded on one side only.

1 - Cold Embrace 2 - Season of the Witch 3 - Undead Awakening 4 - Well of Deception

I don’t like this new wave of neo-thrash death first pushed by bands like THE HAUNTED or WITCHERY. And I do NOT like this band as well, although compared to the other band of Chris Dora SOULLESS it sounds like jewels, especially becouse this singer sings and does not shrieks. Anyway this is a kind of melody that makes my skin twitch, the music while competently assembled is unnerving, there’s this constant thrashy groove, this unnerving melody, I dunno, I cannot bear it although of all the others I knew this is probably the less pompous. If you like swedish neo-thrash like SERPENT OBSCENE you’ll probably be into this. Necropolis come and sign. Anyway, good production as well, but it’s not the band that’s not good, it’s the music that’s gay.

1 - Why Do You Have a Sperm in Stool, Nanny? 2 - The Digged Up Womb 3 - A Giant Shit 4 - Sadistic Dentist 5 - Keen Scream 6 - Halitosis 7 - The Oversalted Menses 8 - The Splitting Haemorrage from Urinary Duct 9 - The Arse Haemorrage Isn't Merry Anywise 10 - Occasional Paroxysm of Acute Bloody Vomit 11 - Children Anal Orgy 12 - The Bloody Dog Shit 13 - The Excrementious Vomit During of Total Constipation 14 - Excrement Geophagy 15 - Still Birth 16 - Citizen X 17 - Livid Child 18 - The Taboo Room (GUT bless you!) 19 - Consequence (GUT bless you!) 20 - The Bloody Anal Probe 21 - Anal Massacre 22 - Fuck Off and Eat Off 23 - The Nun Agnes's Perspired Jacksy 24 - Pigfire 25 - Jolly Car - Accident 26 - Anal Smear 27 - Flesh yes - Soya No! 28 - Grub the Vegetarians - Spare the Woods! 29 - Emollient of Foetal Water 30 - The Lovely Tertiary Flash Burn on 80% of My Body 31 - Mincing Tracks 32 - Pork Reale in the Arabian Masjid 34 - Merry Mental People 35 - Burned Head 36 - The Effluent From Fetid Fester's Ear

Damn, there’s a lot to say about this Cd, and lots of fucking GOOD things. I didn’t know REEK OF SHITS before and what I can state is that’s a great fucking band, complete in every detail: they have this blatant, encomiable goal of sweetening the departure of the German Gods of Gore: GUT, even the last two songs of this disc are inspired and dedicated to the band. When I read the flyer stating their influence I knew it was no easy task, but actally from track 3 on (the first two are a bit different, somewhat more grinding and fast) the crusty/gruesome rocking mosh of earlier German Gore like DEAD/GUT becomes sublimely evident, there’s a lot of samplings, phlegmy throat clearings and bad tasteful sperimentation as well, although not at the level of the first SANITY’S DAWN but I guess you got the idea. The whole artywork idea centers around children photos with faces smashed and crisscrossed by stitches, and the songs titles retain this gore soaked black humour about abnormal feces, children sodomy and other the sicker the better topics. The Cd closes with the second demo tape (that’s why your Cd player says 36 songs when you read only 20 in the back booklet) which are substantially on the same frequency as the rest of the disc, a fucking ode to sickness, when I received this Cd I brought it with me for days before leaving it, it really rocks, with the masterful balance of grind/gore with fast yet clear cut tempos, a good assortment of different, gross, entwined throaty gore vocals and good mosh rock/punk downtuned guitars. The band also seems to have a good stage impact, splattered with blood and other nasty substances, although I might be wrong, but according to the song titles, their English mastery could be improved (or at least overseen before the print) eheh. GREAT fucking GREAT Death/Gore release.

1 - Chopped Up Cohonez 2 - Post Natal Pussy Powerplay 3 - Kamikaze Cock Sucker 4 - Reservoir Cocks 5 - Menstrual Showdown 6 - Rabid Clit Bitch 7 - Diarrhea Blitzkrieg 8 - Faggot Funeral 9 - H.I.V. vs B.S.E. 10 - Asshole Check 11 - Masturbation Hotline 12 - Viginal Pitstop 13 - Fetus Bondage 14 - Baptized in Diarrhea 15 - Knee Deep In Her Pussy 16 - Mutoid Waste 17 - Enema Ass-Fuck 18 - Swallowed By Thy Cunt 19 - Rectal Cunt 20 - Prostata Party Cocktail 21 - Libido Airbag 22 - Outro

While the vocals have the good ole solid frog imprint. LIBIDO AIRBAG was still much less electronic in this album than in the following releases (see “Barrel Blow Job” or the split with CBT), the production a bit more fuzzy… anyway here they were some fresh air in the Goregrind panorama (and hey, we’re talking of ex-GUT here), and the drum-machine combined with some weird, heavy experimentation turned up something really spectral, inhuman… always centering around heavy porn topics, with a funny peculiar humour, yet less into sado/bondage than countrymates CBT, LIBIDO strikes with this weird combination of disco and goregrind, just take “Kamikaze Cock Sucker” has a cheap techno/trance base upon which short toad-like ribbits gurgle out obscenities about impossible penetrations and perverse situations. All of the songs are kept rather short, with some samplings (mainly female moans and ghitar synths) and a mid-pace which never strips into grindcore fury but rather into noise/chaos (like in “Rabid Clit Bitch”). A production a bit crisper wouldnt have hurt much, but again, million years better than the AVULSED cyber-crap (tell me if “Diarrhea Blitzkrieg” is not substantially a PRODIGY song eheh). An image that spins in my mind while listening to this disc is that of a dirty, underground cheap disco where all these half naked whores give up to the abysmal perversity of some fat, sweaty rich pig (have you seen the movie “Society”?), but well, the band has gotten far more into this topic with the following releases…