Miasmal/Vampire - Split EP (2014)

Miasmal and Vampire seem like a natural team up for a split 7". Both are Swedish, both are melodic and aggressive, and both are pretty good, although I'm not sure I'd place the former in quite the same class as the latter. But I certainly dig the Miasmal s/t and their later albums, and the potential for these two on Century Media was immense, and hopefully it still is, but we haven't heard from Miasmal in some years. I admit that I was most interested in this for "The Night It Came Out of the Grave", an exclusive Vampire track which is quite awesome and more in their blackened thrash vein, with heavy overtures of Slayer in the rhythm guitars and a bit more of a wicked rawness than their full-length albums, but mostly within the same wheelhouse and quite a good song, though I can appreciate that they'd cast it out for a collector's item like this one. The lead in particular is awesome, and the cool Hellhammer-groove breakdown at the end.

The Miasmal tune is also somewhat fun, propelled by the band's Entombed d-beat influence and then some riffs that rip forth at a faster, more lethal pacing, but it's not nearly as interesting for me because it does kind of blend in with so many other bands of this variety and doesn't do much to distinguish itself, whereas the other side of the 7" is much more fresh and evil. Still, "Queen of a Poisoned Realm" has some great leads in it and it doesn't wear out its welcome, but I prefer a lot of the tunes on their full-lengths to this one. All told, it's nice that these are exclusive tracks to this release, it has some value for collectors, and any chance to hear another Vampire track is a welcome one, over the last seven years they've grown into one of my favorite Swedish exports.

Verdict: Win [7/10]

https://www.facebook.com/miasmal

https://vampiretheband.bandcamp.com/music

Miasmal - Miasmal (2011)

It sucks to have to constantly chew the soles off my boots, but these Swedish old school wannabes are so persistent in reliving and recapturing the copious evils of their influences that I am, on a near weekly basis, forced to reconsider my exhaustion with such efforts and then firmly plant the footwear into my maw. Miasmal is one such case, sure to join the ranks of Bastard Priest, Tribulation and Tormented as one of the best that metallic nation has had to offer us via the 21st century that it hadn't offered us 20 years ago. For a debut album, this has just about everything you'd expect of the style: driving d-beat rhythms, insidious bursts of hideous agony, and a dire and oppressive atmosphere which feels like a mouthwash of grave dirt.

I've already reviewed this band's 2010 EP, which was also self-titled, and those two tracks: "Creation of Fire" and "Bionic Godhead Erase" are included with this package, along with their 2008 demo, ALSO self-titled, so you're getting quite a nice collection here of all that Miasmal wanted you to hear up to the present. Coincidentally, it's all pretty flush in both mix and song quality, so in effect you can listen straight through and stay reasonably absorbed without the usual interruption of 'hey, this sounds like crap, what happened?' that other full-length/demo mixes often suffer. It also helps that there are no redundancies, all of the tracks are unique to their original incarnations and remain so here.

The true strength of Miasmal must not come from originality, but the fact that they know precisely how to write their goddamn songs, setting appropriate moods to offset their turgid velocity. "Mesmerized" opens like a rampant war stomp, picking up into the expected energy of reliable d-beat death & roll ala Entombed or Desultory, and then seasoning with dour melodies. Several tracks intensify the inherent brutality, like "Equinox 432" and the grinding, all devouring "Toxic Beed". Others like "Mists" counterbalance the onslaught with a measured, haunting atmosphere, created through clean guitars across the backdrop of sodden chords and then escalating into the fluid pummeling of their environs. Most importantly, though, this is a band who can write a good, halfway creative lick, and you'll find these peppered through fare like "Chronicles", "Bionic Godhead Erase" and others with enough frequency that you'll simply never doze off through the entire experience (even the bonus content).

With its great packaging, 14 tracks of fairly consistent strength and a dark, authentic energy coursing through its veins, Miasmal is surely one of the better retrograde Swedish death metal albums I've heard in recent months. It's not perfect, as a lot of the core rhythms bear a familiar feel to them, but its fresher than a lot of other bands attempting to dig into the same tomb, and worth the investment if you're a sucker for the style; perhaps even if you're new to it...

Verdict: Win [8.25/10]

http://www.myspace.com/miasmalband

Miasmal - Miasmal EP (2010)

I've probably brought up the phrase 'old school' in my reviews more times than is healthy for my own sanity, but these past few years have been such an explosion of re-worked ideas and tributes being paid to artists of the 80s and 90s that I see no end in sight. So maybe I'll take my own advice here, and now proclaim this excursion along the paths of the past the 'Not New'. Miasmal is a newer Swedish band who dabble in the Not New, of the death metal variety. You can hear the influence of a band like Entombed or Dismember in the songs, but rather than a mere rehash of those bands' ideas, there is a slug of punk hustle and vibrant flavor swishing around in the creative cores of their brains that forces them to 'draw from' rather than just re-organize a few chords and copy the masters.

The Miasmal EP is brief, with but two songs and a limited 7" pressing, but both are new, with no relation to the band's s/t demo of 2008. If you can get your hands on this, it will be well worth the time, because I have a feeling we're hearing a band here who could carry the traditional Swedish death-torch aloft without walking in the precise same footsteps of its previous bearers. "Creation of Fire" is a real crowd pummeling, a death 'n roll number which should appeal to both the d-beat crazed crowd that idolizes a band like Rotten Sound, Nasum, Skitsystem or Trap Them, and the more cryptic fiends that venerate the lyrical content and visual aesthetics of the early 90s Swedish death metal flock. Good leads bite through the rocking rhythms, and guitarist/vocalist Pontus has a vocal style of the L-G Petrov variety. "Bionic Godhead Erase" is both more abrupt and doom-laden, as it shifts through huge, demented grooves and a faster furry of spurious deathblows, grinding through a series of simple but effective riffs that will have the listener back for seconds once the track ends.

As we are dealing in the Not New, Miasmal is not a band I could quite call original. But they're far less faceless and generic than the swaths of other bands attempting to reinvigorate this early aesthetic upon the hordes of younglings to whom we pass the torch. Kind of like the excellent band Tribulation, you can hear all the clear influences, but they mix it all just enough that you feel they've got a vulture's grip on this old carrion, chewing the carcass that its own existence is made stronger, its circle of flight wider. All you old school...er Not New nutters should give them a listen, and one of the two songs is up on their MySpace.

Verdict: Win [7.5/10]

http://www.myspace.com/miasmalband