In Sweden death metal either goes one of two ways, it's melodic with twin guitar harmonies galloping about or it has the dense dirty guitar sound that Entombed made popular. This band follows the second formula. The vocals sit further back in the mix and are draped in reverb. There is not a great deal of nuance, just dark pummelling. The darker atmosphere lurking beneath this storm of weighty chugs holds a subtle Incantation influence that keeps this from being too much of a tribute to Entombed. It rides a super low-end down-tuned guitar tone, which might make this really heavy, but also creates a rather uniform throb.
The songs are very compactly written. This gives them a one-two punch rather than wearing your ear drums down. A pretty killer riff is the backbone of "Bloodline". This works better than the ultra-dense chug of the title track that gets weighed down by the blasting drums and weight of the walls of Overdrive. It could be seen that some of the highest-rated death metal albums we reviewed here this month, sacrificed some of the density to their sound to have a more melodic sound with which to build their songs. This is a true statement. After all at the end of the day, the songs bring you back to an album, not the guitar tone. "Pleading Depths" does a better job of reconciling these two concepts.
"Adorned in Flesh" blends the sonic qualities of Enrombed with more Incantation-like darkness and despair while hammering full speed ahead. Things get a little murky in some of the faster sections. "Poisoned Ashes" just kind of charges by and makes me listen to it three times before I can form an opinion, which is not that impressive. I already own the old Entombed albums. By the last song I can hear some of the Bolt Thrower, but I own those albums too.They do churn up a sound that drives the songs more often than not and even if it is not original they do a great job at what they do will give this an 8., one of the more impressive albums though not something that earns a place in my regular listening, but perhaps you are not having to take time to hear four or five new albums a day and can work this in. This dropped on Carbonized Records.
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