Whitechapel - This Is Exile (2008)

Transferring from their deal with Siege of Amida/Candlelight over to Metal Blade, the more secure home of fellow deathcore mavens Job for a Cowboy, Whitechapel returned to the millstone to churn out their sophomore This is Exile the year after their debut hit the shelves and ipods of cool kids everywhere, and its contents hit and bruised the pretty faces of many an anguished youth during the band's breakdown centric live performances. This time, no expense was spared, as the band commissioned some better artwork and had the album recorded and mastered in New England, the latter job handled by the infamous metalcore production guru Zeuss out in western Massachusetts.

Considering this, the result is pretty astonishingly similar to the debut album, with perhaps a larger flair for melodic death metal running in currents through the band's brickhouse chug off breakdowns. Some added technicality is to be expected, and thus the album is busier overall, what with the band keeping their three guitar approach to composition (that is really only felt in the leaden bottom end and full rhythm segments behind the breakaway melodies), but it still feels like a mix of the same mosh core and trendy melodic death, with vocals that once again conjure up a mix of Vader, Behemoth or Morbid Angel guttural aggression with the layered on snarls you expect from a lot of modern brutal death. The breakdowns are here, still, and very rarely any good, tending to leech away the bursts of the title track or "Exalt", the latter of which has some decent little lead licks and atmospheric touches that disappear into a wall of fist fucking djent fury.

One area in which the band have clearly improved is in the lyrics. No more will you find the sadistic sexual surgery of the debut. The band seem to have moved on to higher brow concepts like sacrilege and undead social rebellion. Granted, they can hardly be dubbed 'poetic' or even all that interesting, but it seems a little more fitting to the band's aural aesthetic. The mix here is brighter and bloodier than the debut, and perhaps more welcoming since the band have upped their melodic ante considerably. Ultimately, I feel like This is Exile is a slight step up from The Somatic Defilement. It's more thoughtful, but still pretty frustrating, with the best track being a 3 minute melodic chugging instrumental... ("Death Becomes Him") and almost everything else flipping its lid between forgettable thrusting rhythms, semi-tech showmanship and trendy beat downs. This is one dance partner you're not going to remember in the morning, regardless of what venereal ailment you've picked up.

Verdict: Fail [4/10] (in a sense I enjoy the agony)

http://www.myspace.com/whitechapel

Whitechapel - The Somatic Defilement (2007)

Whitechapel is one of the three major acts in the contemporary 'deathcore' genre here in the US, which, depending on which side of the 15 year old age barrier you fall, is either one of the most exciting or dreadful trends in all of extreme music. Not as fashionable as California's Carnifex, nor as evolutionary and intense as Arizona's Job for a Cowboy (on a good day), they seem to represent a more blue collar approach to the popular medium. Alas, this doesn't really translate into anything interesting musically, because the Knoxville brutes make most of the same mistakes as many of their less interesting peers, while adding nothing to the table that we weren't already sick of when metalcore turned from its waking, esoteric promise to insufferable pop inflected trash.

The Somatic Defilement seems to operate heavily around some of the most generic breakdowns the human mind can conceive. Breakdowns that were dated even as a seminal band like Earth Crisis or Hatebreed were taking off their training wheels. Add a pinch of math or djent metal influence (Meshuggah, specifically), slight passages of melodic death ala At the Gates, and dual grunt/snarl vocals that sound like your average overbearing tribute to early Carcass, Morbid Angel and Deicide, and let simmer for 32 minutes of dejected, which blows its load all too soon with almost all of its most potentially interesting tricks in the title track, which features several flighty death metal passages dispersed among numerous chug downs. "The Somatic Defilement" is like being teased with a death metal carrot down a shady alley only to be jumped by a pack of metalcore kids wearing huge pants and wallet chains.

This is not the only track that throws away its better seconds to a wasteland of mediocre mosh chugging. "Prostatic Fluid Asphyxiation" cycles between a decent opening volley of technical, clinical death spasms to some Meshuggah-like riffing, and then closes with an awful, hack palm mute sequence. "Fairy Fay" gives you about 10 seconds of something brisk before it too segues into the gutter, though there's a nice atmosphere as the lyrics bounce over the mutes into the bridge sequence. "Alone in the Morgue" teases us once more with its intense double bass driven old school death metal riff, sort of a mesh of Suffocation and Pestilence, but then erupts with some choppy, uninspiring riffs and guitar squeals before...you guessed it, another flatulent break down heavy on the palm muting, which completely strangles the momentum.

It's pretty unfortunate, because you can tell if these guys could stop fucking around and further some of their better ideas, they'd manifest into at least an average brutal/tech death metal outfit. Granted, that in itself is not for everyone, but personally I'd find it more compelling than what often seems a ceaseless tirade forged to sate the lowest common denominator of metal and hardcore fans; the mosh tyrant who couldn't give two shits about music, just a free chance to beat on people without spending a night in the slammer. Whitechapel do pen some pretty sadistic lyrics about molestation, murder and sexual malpractice, so in this way they're not a far cry from your typical gore or rape fantasy death metal element, with a slightly more psychotic spin, but the music doesn't even come close to building to a climax before it constantly lets you down with its shallow, vapid grooving and 'tough' sounding death/core vocals.

Verdict: Fail [3/10] (in the name of anatomy)

http://www.myspace.com/whitechapel

Wrathchild America - 3-D (1991)

You didn't have to look far to realize that something has changed within the Wrathchild America camp. Just one glance at the cover image and you'll find something even more perplexing than the debut, which was a fucking guy stuck in a maze! Okay, perhaps its not 'perplexing', but 3-D certainly looks surreal, and even the logo had changed from something expected to something more uniform, modern, and...chic? Thankfully for us all, the actual musical content has a lot going to it, so it's hardly the product of some pretentious ejaculation. In fact, Wrathchild America were one of the few bands who seemed as if they'd survive the wake of the great thrash metal purge of 1991-92...and they did. But not as Wrathchild America.

3-D shows some a pretty sound progression from the material of Climbin' the Walls, which was largely just a flirtation with Metallica and Megadeth worship that failed to even take the coat of those bands' shadows in the 80s. Here, we've got a band trying something new without sucking at it. The choruses are catchy, the songs more uniquely structured, and you can hear that the band are bringing in the outside influences of jazz, and perhaps a tiny element of funk, without soiling themselves over it. The thrash & hard rock mix of Brad Divens' vocals is a more subdued hue, but a strong improvement over the debut, and where the rest of the band add in some contributions, it sounds quite good. As for the composition itself, just about every song has a few riffs worth going back to, and as a whole it flows rather nicely. You'll grow to trust the album after only a few songs, and it never betrays you, provided you've got a slightly more open mind than normal when approaching a thrash record.

The songs. Many of them are great, not the least of which include the opener "3-D Man", an oddly structured, strutting rally against the narrow minded, and then "Spy", which was the album's 'hit single' if every there were one. This is a pretty impressive, accessible tune with a dainty walking bassline that is eventually laid on thicker with the guitar chords, and I love the private eye philosophy in the lyrics, even if one might argue that this is not really entirely 'metal'. Sure, it's fun, the sort of campy fun that I often don't appreciate on an album like this, but it's very well written, if not the best song here. "Gentleman Death", "Forever Alone" and the other 'silly' piece here "Surrounded by Idiots" are all just as riffy, with solid melodic chords being used against catchy, simple thrash riffs that felt fresh and crisp in their day, as they still do. I also enjoy the groove and swagger of "Another Nameless Face" and "Desert Grins", and the eerie ballad verses of "Draintime".

If you've got the CD, there's another bonus silly song, and it's not an original. No worries though, this isn't Pink Floyd, but a blues rock cover of "I Ain't Drunk, I'm Just Drinkin'" by Albert Collins. Of course, the original is funny, and they don't really fuck around with it, but it does sort of tie together the band's sense of security around incorporating outside elements into their music, and unlike so many faltering thrash bands trying to cast their last chips into the game, Wrathchild America didn't quite fail at it. Okay, well they changed their name to Souls at Zero and put out two more albums of middling quality, so I guess they felt they must have, but at least drummer Shannon Larkin got to perform with Glenn Tipton and even a gig with Black Sabbath. Souls at Zero does feel like a natural continuation of the band's experimentation here, but it's nothing to write home about, so while it's not perfect, I'll have to nominate 3-D as remaining the best work of these musicians, and something to check out if you're interested in what bands were trying right as the bubble burst on this beloved genre.

Verdict: Win [8/10] (I can make you disappear)

Wrathchild America - Climbin' the Walls (1989)

Not a hell of a lot of metal bands got to sign with huge labels like Atlantic in the 80s, and surely it was a testament (pun intended) to the trajectory of your career to count yourself among them. Or was it? Well, in the case of Maryland's Wrathchild America, who added the national suffix so they wouldn't dare be confused with a crappy UK band, it certainly seemed like they were going to be huge. Back in the close of that great decade, this was one of those bands that even your normal high school friends had heard about, you know, the cliquey types who liked Metallica, Ozzy, Megadeth and Anthrax but couldn't be bothered to ever delve further into the underground or even consider themselves 'metal heads' publicly for fear of losing job prospects or not getting laid by the good girls.

Yes, Wrathchild America had a lot going for them, but I'm not it had truly manifest in the debut Climbin' the Walls, with its iconic hesher in a maze cover artwork. Though the band would later develop into a more interesting hybrid of progressive thrash with a few jazz aesthetics, this is more like a mixture of Metallica's 1984-86 period with some traditional British heavy metal, not terribly unlike another hopeful band, Powermad. You've got some decent enough songs here like "Climbin' the Walls" itself which has a few decent, ripping guitar riffs and stupid but fun lyrics; the driving, melodic "Day of the Thunder"; the goofy but endearing vampire epic "London After Midnight"; or "Silent Darkness (Smothered Life)", a hymn to being buried alive with a nice melodic guitar line in the chorus. But then you've got garbage like the bluesy hard rock & roll of "No Deposit, No Return" which might have fit better with their UK counterpart, or "Candy from a Madman", which is hard not to laugh at despite an acceptable riff or two.

Then there's the cover of Pink Floyd's "Time", which you might not expect on an album like this, and well, it's "Time". While a band like Voivod would manage to convert an experience like "Astronomy Domine" into something relevant and even poignant on the mesmeric Nothingface this very same year, it just doesn't seem that it belongs with Wrathchild America. Granted, it's not the worst cover out there, but it's not doing Climbin' the Walls any favors. Otherwise, this is just not all that great of an effort. Catchy enough perhaps to get a few people to notice, with decent guitars and drumming. The production was sufficient enough to match label mates like the comparable Savatage, but in the end, this album would be greatly outclassed by its follow up, and I very rarely find any compulsion to go back and listen aside from maybe two songs.

Verdict: Indifference [6.75/10]

Warrax - Chamber of Doom (1991)

When your band's name is Warrax, and your sole album is titled Chamber of Doom, I feel that you have an inherent duty to kick all of our asses below the ground with some of the most raucous, barbaric thrash metal in all human history. Unfortunately, as I encountered this in some random sweep for obscure thrash metal I'd never heard, I was anything but impressed. The sketchy but effective cover art, smeared blood logo and title promise some hostility, but this is little more than run of the mill, average thrashing with a cohesive sense of bludgeoning musicianship, but no real riffs or songs to speak of unless you simply want to bang your brash head into a wall to anything with a guitar and mutes.

Perhaps the band I could most compare this to would be Boston's Wargasm, primarily due to the manly, almost constipated, yet melodic vocals. The riffs come thick over a noisy drum mix, and there is no loss for bass tone either. I might also add that the leads are adept enough, if only they had more central, solid songs from which to gush out their rage. Here, you've got a mix of mid paced to slow, yet busy material like "Warrax/Victim of Innocence", the Slayer into Demolition Hammer evolution of "Chamber of Doom", the Sacred Reich pacing of "Risen Again" and the crushing, crude crunch of "Murder 2nd Degree", none of which is remotely compelling outside of its own blunt existence. "Tight Grip of Society" has a half-decent riff in the verse there, again reminiscent of Slayer of Sacred Reich, but it's just not enough to warrant multiple listens.

Chamber of Doom doesn't suck, and granted, for a thrash record in the early 90s it has a fine 80s broth to its production, but it simply fails at what so many others excelled in: delivering the guitar riffs and chorus to salivate over. You can smash beer bottles to this music, and sate the violent impulses you might turn towards thrash metal for in the first place, but you really can't remember it later, scratching your head in confusion as to what that damn band's name was. With no distinct songs, and no real stir in an underground that was already abandoning this genre to brandish their shiny new Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains CDs, it appears that their fate might have determined before they even dropped a note in the studio. Warrax was a thrash band, through and through, but that is about all you can say for or against it.

Verdict: Indifference [5.25/10]

Solefald - Norrøn Livskunst (2010)

After an unusual and unexpected swerve into familiar, mythological territory with their pair of Icelandic Odyssey albums, Solefald use their 7th full length Norrøn Livskunst to return to the wilder waters we've often associated them with in the past, leaving a single track ("Waves Over Valhalla") to wrap up a sort of pseudo-trilogy. Those cultural excursions were not unwelcome, and the band still managed to slap their trademark brand of uncanny surrealism to the tales, but this feels a lot more like a natural progression from past works like Neonism, Pills Against the Ageless Ills and In Harmonia Universali, all of which more dutifully represented the straight-jacketed writing of Cornelius and Lazare, one of Norway's more irresistible but bizarre duos waltzing on the outskirts of the extreme metal classification. This is still a concept album, but it motions forward into the culture of the country's transition from the 19th to 20th centuries.

Norrøn Livskunst translates into something like 'Norse Life Art', which is perhaps the only broad strokes one could use to paint the structured variation found on this record, which is easily one of their best. Organ sounds are threaded throughout the compositions, and horns and guitars clash amidst the revelry of the melodic undertow, but by far the star of the show here would be the vocal arrangements, which are simply the most insane and superior of the band's career thus far. Tracks like "Norrøn Livskunst", "Song Til Stormen" and "Til Heimen Yver Havet" mix the morose, multi tiered choirs with the barking excess so common to the genre, and though the riffs stream below like glorious swells of storm, it is the vocals which sail off so deeply into your conscience, making this a memorable trip into the cultural past and present the band is exploring. All are performed to perfection here, and they really give you a sense of not only the band's place in the world, but the madness of artisans beyond devoted to their craft.

This IS a Solefald record, of course, and you should still expect anomalies to bludgeon you out of left field, the madness made ultimately manifest. No better example here than the playful, phonetic "Tittentattenteksti", an unforgettable piece which makes fantastic use of guest vocals courtesy of Agnete Kjolsrud, who sounds here like a mischievous teen witch dancing on your bones and trampling your dreams while she cycles through 'at' sounds along the simple and thick, melodious guitar lines, while the male vocals bark behind them. This would already be enough to make black metal purists panic and everyone else gargle with joy or terror, but add to this one of the most beautiful, layered chorus segments and a few industrial touches for what must be one of the most memorable individual songs I've heard all year, despite lyrical lines like 'wid a slit way up de butt' and 'dat is wot a rat shud get'. So unbelievably cool, it delivers me shivers every time I brave it.

Other standouts here include "Eukalyptustreet", a steadily climbing, 9+ minute piece which transforms from a tonal vocal poem to an urban saxophone solo that heralds in a series of disturbed, whispering patterns, only to erupt into choral glories and chugging metallic force. "Raudedauden" rips along with dense, thrashing force and soaring, ICS Vortex styled vocals, while "Stridsljod/Blackabilly" is a giddy Gothic/black crusher based around a strange murder mystery novel that Cornelius had written. "Waves Over Valhalla" continues the Viking prog saga the band thoroughly engaged on their previous two albums, and it's got more of the stunning vocal arrangements that make this record such a winner. "Vitets Vidd I Verdi" is another of the strange, driving pieces, escalating through bustling synthesizers and more of the beautiful femme vocals used in the chorus of "Tittentattenteksti", and "Hugferdi" follows a similar theme.

When you woke up today, did you feel a driving need to listen to something different? Well, Norrøn Livskunst certainly fulfills that desire, recorded in stunning studio polish with a number of songs I will not soon forget. If you fear the liberal implementation of diverse, yet refined elements into your black metal, a genre which Solefald is only distantly rooted, then it's highly likely you've never enjoyed a single record this band has ever recorded, and I doubt this will change your mind. On the other hand, fans of Ulver, Borknagar, Peccatum, Ihsahn and earlier Solefald should be quite thrilled to experience this, because it faithfully and fearlessly fords the fjords of expression like a cannon manning, crackpot admiral so stuffed with soma and regret that he has no choice but to sail to his own, beautiful suicide. Weird doesn't always have to be this good. But this time, it's more than good.

Verdict: Epic Win [9.25/10] (the twilight of the gods was not an erasure)

http://www.myspace.com/solefaldofficial

Toxaemia - Buried to Rise: 1990-1991 Discography (2010)

Old school Swedish death metal pundits (myself included) have been spoiled in the past few years by a great number of compilations that gather out of print demos, EPs and albums into cohesive, single packages available at a reasonable fare. Seeing that almost all of this material is well out of print, it certainly beats mining online auctions for weeks on end, paying exorbitant prices for stuff that really few could ever care about. Supply and demand in action. Well, like the treatments given to Gorement, Crematory, Interment, or the early works of Evocation, Buried to Rise goes above and beyond to give you the full monty on the little known Toxaemia, a band that operated for only a few years to produce some truly grimy death metal, more of old school Entombed and Grave with a touch of Dutch bands like Pestilence and Asphyx.

These guys were not writing university textbooks here, just good old disgusting death metal with a lot more character than complexity. Both of the band's demos, Kaleidoscopic Lunacy (1990) and Buried to Rot (1991) are included, plus the Beyond the Realm EP (1990) and some loose bits. The kicker here is that they are all given to you twice, once in their original incarnation and then once again with a Dan Swanö remix/remaster disc. I'm going to have to go with the newer mix, if only because it manages to snare the original contrast of the dark, bludgeoning tones to a new height, and its simply more audible. But having both is quite the testament to authenticity, so curmudgeons and purists will have nothing to complain about. Prior to this, I'd only heard the songs on Beyond the Realm when I was researching obscure Swedish death, so the demos are new to me, but that material is pretty consistent in style, if a little less intense than "Beyond the Realm" or the grudging, grinding slugfest that is "Expired Christianity". "Another Lie, Another Death" has my favorite riff of them all, a winding and fuzzy melodic doom eclipsed by rugged death thrashing.

From a production standpoint, the Buried to Rot demo sounds the most balanced and potent, and this too features a few of the better songs, in the crushing "Tragedies Through Centuries" and title track, but I think the EP is the top choice. There are a few different versions of the track "Crematorium", of which the 1991 is clearly the better choice. Toxaemia were hardly innovators of their style, they simply took some brutal US influence, flavored it in a little of that home brewed, thick tone and wrote some crude yet effective material that would have been ripe for a mosh pit. But it's certainly authentic feeling, without the added burden of nostalgic intent. Nothing here would have qualified for a Left Hand Path, Indecent & Obscene or a You'll Never See..., but it does the trick if you're honing your ears into primal, morbid chaos. That it arrives with such a completeness is only a bonus. Own this, and you own all the pride and joy of a young band in several years of dark dedication.

Verdict: Win [7/10]

http://www.myspace.com/toxaemia2

IronWood - Storm Over Sea (2010)

Another of those bands that wears its physical cover symbol well, IronWood is an Australian outfit that presents its sophomore album Storm Over Sea without much subtlety. This is a pretty wide array of styles, ranging from somber pianos and folksy guitars, huge vocal arrangements that might have the Beach Boys quivering in their sunny boots. Then there's the metal, which ranges from big walls of folk metal backing chords to sudden, jarring progressive sections that don't always make the most sense where they appear, and then you've got some fairly straight forward melodic black metal segments which actually turn out to be some of the least interesting on the record.

Where to start, because there is just so much here...how about the vocals? At best, they can be quite a beautiful experience, as in the folksy traipsing about in "Share the Burden" or the duet late in "Weather the Storm". At worst, they can be somewhat distracting, like in "Infinite Sea" where the cleans don't really seem up to par with the performance elsewhere on the record. Some of these vocals really shout 'what are you doing on a metal record', because clearly IronWood could be the down under equivalent to a vocal group like Fleet Foxes or something off Pet Sounds, if they put a little more work into it. I really can't claim that these sequences always fit well within the metal environs, because frankly, everything this band does that isn't metal seems so much more richer and atmospheric than what is. This is not the fault of the musicians, mind you, because everything here is well played, from the swerving of the bass to the keys and acoustics to the outbursts of proggish death/thrash metal that explode in "A Bond to Sever" or the shorter "Will to Live".

The album's composition is also a little strange, as the band veers from 3 minute tracks into larger, 11+ minute epics that are a huge calamity of ideas. Most of these ideas are individually sound, and not a song goes by here without at least some item of merit. The "Arctic Tern" instrumental is a beautiful, soothing oceanic piece, as is the extended bridge within "Weather the Storm", while the closing chords and melodies of "When It's All Over" are nice in that somber, depressive rock atmosphere. The metal riffs aren't necessarily bad, they're just not organized to stress their most important fibers, and the result is that IronWood feels not like one band, but two bands trying to separate into constituent projects. There are certainly bands out there who can make such diversity work, take Vintersorg, Borknagar or Amorphis for example, but with IronWood I felt myself struggling a little to retain interest in the one half when I was so eager for their next delve into tranquility.

Those complaints aside, along with the inconsistency of the vocals, I'd be lying to say that there wasn't thought put into this, and that there is something less than untapped potential. For an independent band, they sound extremely clear, and thus fans of better budget folk and prog metal will be pleased that they don't have to listen through some gargled mess. The maritime concept being woven through the album is appealing (their previous album :Fire:Water:Ash: dealt in fire), and you can indeed feel the moments not only through the tidal samples hovering at the edge of perception, but the actual structure of the music, the flow of the guitars. You could very easily imagine this as periods of oceanic calm being interrupted by atmospheric spasms as weather erupts. It works well enough, but I wasn't feeling most of the individual tunes outside of such a conceptual contrast. I never lost the sense that the components here could be extracted and stitched together into other patterns for greater success.

I can laud a non-European band like IronWood for writing intelligent pagan/heathen themes and not sounding silly, but I'm not sure the music has quite caught up to the vision.

Verdict: Indifference [6/10]

http://ironwoodsound.com.au/

Exciter - Death Machine (2010)

I feel like the problem for a legendary band like Exciter is that they already forged such a concrete proof of concept in their early output that there is almost no impetus to listen to any of their catalog post- Unveiling the Wicked (1986). Along with early Razor, they were the gods of rugged Canadian speed metal, known for their wild, bullshit free live sets and ripping, screeching vocals over John Ricci's non stop traditional speed/power riffs. So yeah, give me Heavy Metal Maniac, Violence & Force or Long Live the Loud any day, crank it up and watch my frown turn upside down, but I've simply not felt in the least bit compelled by almost anything the band created in the 90s or beyond.

However, the band still needs to put some food on the table, and their van on the map as it launches the speed metal assault on any shore, so they grace us with new albums from time to time. Death Machine is the second effort with Kenny 'Metal Mouth' Winter on vocals, and he's unfortunately the one interesting aspect of this record. He's a little more snarling and wicked sounding than his predecessors Beehler or Belanger, almost as if an Udo Dirkschneider had signed up for duties here, and he's thoroughly entertaining. As for the music, it's the standard variety of familiar sounding, incessant guitars, ranging from fast ("Demented Prisoners") to really fast ("Razor In Your Back"), with only a few stops for breath (fist pumper "Power and Domination" being an example), and Winter shifting back and forth between his sneers and jeers and beautiful, high pitched screams. Ricci's leads are frivolous but tight, the rhythm section of Cohen and Charron compact and level enough to burn these mothers home.

But this is Exciter. You're not here for rocket science and innovation, you're just here to have molten metal poured in your ears for a half hour or so until you move to the next aspect of your life. To that extent, Death Machine is surely not a bad album. It doesn't stop for directions and it doesn't take an excess amount of time pissing around the roadside bathrooms. Ricci definitely has more mediocre material than this under his belt, but there's not a lot here that I feel an urge to revisit. None of the chorus parts seem legendary, despite Winter's enthusiasm, and the guitars are just functional enough to blow speakers and secure blowjobs after the fact. The production is nice and thick, but retains some of the raw frenzy of the band's yester years. This is one for the speed metal fans, and the speed metal fans only, and it seems Exciter has become all too comfortable in this niche. It wouldn't hurt them to write some catchier music, but then, it's not as if this is a bad album, just sadly average, like the last half dozen.

Verdict: Indifference [6.75/10]

http://listen.to/exciter

Desultory - Counting Our Scars (2010)

Desultory is a name needing little introduction to fans of melodic Swedish death metal of the 90s, with two good albums under their belts in 1993's Into Eternity and 1994's Bitterness, both released under the fairly high profile of Metal Blade Records. Like their countrymen Entombed, they decided to journey into a more rock and roll influenced direction in the mid 90s, after losing one of their core members. This resulted in Swallow the Snake, an ill-received effort that did not ultimately pay off for the band. Granted, it wasn't entirely void of decent music, but even as one open to the potential of such a manipulation, I must admit that it paled in comparison to their earlier material, and the album's fate was appropriate, the members' decision to continue that direction as Zebulon also folded some years ago.

Cut ahead 14 years, and Desultory have returned with their 4th full-length, aptly titled Counting Our Scars, and returned to the heavily melodic roots. That this comes at a time when the old school Swedish sounds remain all the rage is probably not a complete coincidence, but is there ever? The attraction to this style is at a natural retrospective height, so it was the perfect time to strike, and Desultory have at least built a record here that honors their last effort, Bitterness in its melancholic, thrusting energies. "In a Cage" is a killer opener that really builds up expectations for the remainder of the content, with Klas Morberg's vocals passionately driven atop the sorrow stoking rhythms and enthusiastic drumming. Fans of At the Gates, Eucharist and old Cemetery will immediately adhere to this style, and for the most part the record holds to the standard, through engaging pieces like "Uneven Numbers", "Dead Ends" and "Leeching Life" holding the lion's share of my attention.

Considering that most of the current and returning Swedish death purists use a more brutal scenario in their composition, a band like Desultory is always welcome. There's certainly enough musicality and aggression here to draw in devotees of Slaughter of the Soul, The Somberlain and A Velvet Creation, and the majority of riffs deliver without feeling too trite, familiar or repetitive to the band's own past. Had Swallow the Snake never manifest, this record might very well have filled its space, but probably the gulf of 10-15 years was required for the band to come to terms with their identity, and how something that wasn't broken, never needed any fixing. Counting Our Scars is not some miracle return to form, and its neither the most engaging of the recent albums in this territory. I'd give a slight edge to Evocation's latest, a band that's been around nearly as long, but certainly this is another of those releases which evokes the 'welcome back' sentimentality, in addition to some fine music.

Verdict: Win [7.75/10]

http://www.myspace.com/desultoryofficial