Bloodbath - Resurrection Through Carnage

BLOODBATH - Resurrection Through Carnage (CENTURY MEDIA - CD 2002)

Frankly speaking, the whole idea for the so called super projects, read: temporary bands, formed by so well known musicians and usually directed by major record labels, is something what I mostly despise. It’s where the artificial music business and cash talks, not the real needs, interests, passions and desires – at least in many cases it is like that. And maybe with Bloodbath it was the same in the beginnings, who knows… I am not the one to judge it. But the reality is that this once side project turned into a real band, with real albums, real music, real gigs, not something temporary and onetime thing. And more so, unlike many side projects, Bloodbath proved to have certain high quality in most of the recordings they did and so, it’s not an unworthy shit. They started with killer “Breeding Death” EP and then this crushing death metal masterpiece came out – “Resurrection Through Carnage”, a classic old styled Swedish death metal beast! Moaning and bitching aside, this is just bloody good album, sounding like some of the early 90’s masterpieces. It is almost surprising that something like this came from the people involved in Katatonia. Sure, they’re experienced musicians, who not only played soft melancholic rock in their lives… but it’s so different from what they usually play… and at the same time this music sounds natural, like they really did have death metal floating in their veins. Good!

The whole secret behind “Resurrection Through Carnage” is simple as it can only be; they composed a bunch of great songs, came up with killer riffs, some catchy, straight to the point rhythms, proper feeling, had simple, but awesome ideas and good vocalist … More so, they kind of blended the classic Swedish death metal style (similar to some Grave, Unleashed, early Hypocrisy and Entombed) with some ingredients from the old US legends such as Autopsy or very early Death…There’s no special philosophy or fuckin mathematics, just pure, straight forward, no bullshit death metal and it just clicked perfectly with such songs like “Like Fire”, “Ways to the Grave”, “So You Die”, “Mass Strangulation”. Each song is damn memorable and force the headbanging and it’s also good to scream some of the lyrics (by the way, Mikael Akerfeldt did a better job here than I would expect! He really has this old vibe in his growling!). The music is also soaked with the properly created gory, bloody horror atmosphere… So, there’s nothing missing here, just great, high quality old school death metal. It’s nothing original, nothing sophisticated (let’s leave that to Opeth hehe), but it delivers everything what we all enjoy in the traditional death metal sounds. And more so, it turned out 666times better than majority of few albums from bands I mentioned above, like Unleashed for example, who’re the dullest of all. So, super group or super bullshit, no matter what the real intentions behind “Resurrection Through Carnage” were, I still think it is an awesome death metal record and to this day it’s also Bloodbath’s best piece in my opinion.

Standout tracks: “Like Fire”, “Ways to the Grave”, “So You Die”, “Mass Strangulation”

Final rate: 80/100