Gorement - Within the Shadow of Darkness – The Complete Recordings

 

 

 

 

 

 

GOREMENT - Within the Shadow of Darkness – The Complete Recordings (CENTURY MEDIA - LP 2012)

Finally, finally, fuckin finally! How long could I wait for Gorement vinyl to come out? Shit, it seemed like eternity. At first I was thrilled that Necroharmonic released the compilation titled “Darkness of the Dead” on CD back in 2004, which quickly became my “must have” purchase, especially as the first press of “The Ending Quest” goes for hilarious money and the demos and EP are also very hard (and expensive) to get. This compilation obviously had a lot of sense and I did enjoy it a lot. But ever since Necroharmonic announced they will do a vinyl version (and before that it was Blood Harvest, who also wanted to do that!) I was crossing the fingers, waiting for it patently. The time has passed and nothing was happening, no vinyl anywhere… And suddenly I was attacked by the info that Century Media is doing another compilation, this one titled “Within the Shadow of Darkness – The Complete Recordings”. Hmm, at first I didn’t really know what to think about it. You know, how many times and in how many different versions can you release the same songs? But then it turned out that the LP of Necroharmonic was cancelled and Century Media will release all those old recordings on vinyl, but under different title and with new layout, doing also the CD version at the same time. OK, now it makes sense I guess, although I was kinda sceptical about the whole idea at first. Not for long!!! Once I got the LP of “Within the Shadow of Darkness – The Complete Recordings” in my hands I smiled and screamed, happy not just to have those Gorement recordings on LP, but also seeing how great job was done for this compilation. Necroharmonic did everything right and did good job for the “Darkness of the Dead” CD, but Century Media did something even better, something very unique and now I dare to say that this LP belongs to favourite vinyls in my collection!!!!! Ha, even The Crypt Productions will have difficulties beating it, even if I really love their works also.

So, what makes “Within the Shadow of Darkness – The Complete Recordings” so special? Obviously it’s the music in the first place, but not only that. The whole packaging of this vinyl is just fuckin impressive! I really love the new front artwork – it looks superb! There’s a poster of it also, so you can see every damn detail of this front cover and man, it does look killer. At least once I’m happy that they didn’t use the original cover from “The Ending Quest” in the front. But “Within the Shadow of Darkness – The Complete Recordings” is not just a massive 100 minute long Swedish death metal experience, but it is also a deep investigation of Gorement history. The booklet for the LP (and I guess the CD also) contains very informative and lengthy liner notes from Patrik Fernlund about each of the recordings, which are on this compilation. You’ll get to know everything! Obviously they all are coming with the original artworks, demo booklets, old band photos, recording details, lyrics… And then there’s damn long and interesting interview done by Nicolas Constantini, the guy, who did killer book titled “Encyclopedia of Svensk DödsMetall” (RECOMMENDED!!!!!!!). They talk about everything what deals with the past of Gorement. And this is exactly the reason, why I love such compilations and why they, if done right, make so much sense. It is a great tribute to the classic death metal band and the whole movement. Just like when I was masturbating (no, not really hehe!) when I was listening to compilations LPs from the likes of Nirvana 2002, God Macabre, Uncanny, Furbowl, Abhorrence, Pandemonium, Centinex, etc now I also do so with “Within the Shadow of Darkness – The Complete Recordings”. In many ways this Gorement compilation do not lacks anything. It is perfect in every detail. Especially as also musically it gathers all of the band’s recordings: “Human Relic” demo 1991, “Obsequies…” demo 1991, “Into Shadows” EP 1992, “The Ending Quest” LP 1993, “Promo 1995” (very rare to find)... Plus the CD version has a bootleg live recording from 1991. The LP hasn’t got them, but luckily they’ve added the double CD (!!!!!!!!) to the LP version, so you can also listen to the whole stuff on the compact disc. Ha, would you believe that?

Few words about the music? Let’s go…

When I listen to “The Ending Quest” I am just thrilled by this album. I mean I love Swedish death metal ever since around 1991-92, when I got to know Dismember and Entombed first and this feeling is still there and “The Ending Quest” is just a classic example of this kind of playing. What’s more I dare to say it belongs to the top five of my all time favourite Swedish death metal albums, along with “The Nocturnal Silence”, “Like an Ever Flowing Stream”, “The Winterlong”, “Left Hand Path” and “Dark Recollections”. Everything about this album is just superb and I love every bit of it, starting with the killer production – what I find as funny is that the band members say that they were not happy with it and that the producer was an asshole, etc… Ha, I know that the musicians may think differently than fans, but I love the sound of “The Ending Quest” and it is just classic Sweden, even if the whole album was recorded in Germany! But it sounds just like Cemetary, Epitaph and all other such amazing Swedish bands from this time and of course there is also a very strong influence of the early Paradise Lost – undeniably Gorement liked their doomy tempos and melodies and did something similar in their music. And this music is just classic, very melodic, very passionate and emotional, but also very aggressive… There are some of the best Swedish melodies I ever heard and some of the most thrilling songs. Even such piece as “Silent Hymn (For the Dead)” sounds absolutely stunning. Originally they wanted to add some female vocals to it, but the producer didn’t agree and said differently... Ha, I like this song the way it is. The album collects some early Gorement songs – from demos and EP – plus has few newer ones, so it is like a good collection of all that Gorement had best to offer at that time. Well, when reading the liner notes there were some very interesting things about the whole composing and recording process of “The Ending Quest”, so give it a read and listen to such killer songs as “Into Shadows”, “Sea of Silence”, “The Memorial” and “My Ending Quest”.

Then there are all those cult demo releases: “Human Relic” from 1991 (which originally had the same artwork as Morbid Angel on “Blessed Are the Sick” (hehe) and “Obsequies” from the same year… The first demo is obviously good, but the vocals on it are just hilarious. The story says that the band was so unhappy with the performance of their then vocalist, Mikael Bergström, that they had to put some effects on his recorded vocals, so they would sound any decently. And yeah, you can definitely hear that, as the growls sounds like someone played the LP on the slower RPM. Nowadays it obviously has its charm and the effect is not as terrible as you would think, but I guess the band must have been really unhappy with it, when they’ve recorded the debut demo. And this is why they quickly fired Mikael Bergström and soon hired Jimmy Karlsson to do the second demo, “Obsequies”, just six months later. Again it was a very good demo, but for me the best of Gorement was yet to come; the 7”EP “Into Shadows” is just superb and definitely it belongs to my favourite 7”EP singles of all time. The band already had their sound developed into more atmospheric and sometimes almost doomy, with more those Paradise Lost influences, which I mentioned and on this EP they basically have the sound already similar to the one from “The Ending Quest” LP.

Finally the LP has the mysterious “Promo 1995”, which was done right before Gorement changed the name for Pipers Dawn and started to play some gothic / doomy stuff. Well, you can hear the problems with identity and uncertainty for what direction they should go next as each of the three promo songs sounds differently. One sounds like Cathedral and Convulse on their second album, another one is just a plain rip off of Paradise Lost’s “Icon” and “Draconian Times” and one more song is more like the older Gorement stuff. There’s a lot of confusion really here, but the whole material wouldn’t be that bad, if it wasn’t for the vocals, which sounds quite weak. Jimmy tried some cleaner sounding vocals, more like something similar to Nick Holmes and especially Johan Liiva, but he rather failed in my opinion. So, Gorement ceased to exist after this recording for the same reasons for which so many other bands from that time have split up – change of the musical direction, getting bored with death metal and disappointment with how everything went with their debut LP.  Oh, what a pity, but from the other hand I wouldn’t want Gorement to suck the dicks like Wombbath for instance did with their second album “Lavatory”.

Uh, it’s time to finish this review. And let me just say that releasing such compilations as this one has so much sense nowadays. I mean obviously there’s a lot of interest in the old death metal scene, but even without that it should have been done, to memorize and pay tribute to the great scene and great bands. Gorement definitely deserved that and this compilation LP is just a must to have in collection, LP version especially, as it just looks (and sounds) superb. Century Media did it in the only reasonable way, with so much info and story in the booklet that it is also a lot of reading, not just listening. I love it.

Final rate: 100/100

Deivos - Emanation From Below

DEIVOS - Emanation From Below (EMPIRE - CD 2006)

Through the years Poland has reached the status of one of the most important and exciting death metal countries and while I am listening to so many killer bands from this country I can only be happy about that and proud also, as I’m Polish myself. The number of great bands is countless now and maybe many of them do not get as much deserved attention as many mediocre bands from Sweden, but fuck that… They deserve the support and the true maniac will always recognise the better from worse. And if I was going to recommend you any newer Polish death metal band, then I would definitely go for Deivos. Obviously at the time of writing this review they already have three full length albums and the 15 years long career, so they’re not really that young anymore hehe, but even having all that in my mind and the fact that they’re been signed to Unique Leader Records, it still seems like Deivos are slightly underestimated and unknown, even here in Poland. Fuck, it is about time to change it. And the best way to do that is obviously to listen to their music and “Emanation from Below” is more than a good start, if you ask me, especially since the previous MCD “Hostile Blood” may be too difficult to get nowadays. Anyway, “Emanation from Below” was released in 2006 by Empire Records and you should have no problems with getting it, as quite many copies circle around the internet distributions and auctions, for very small prices. And it definitely is a must to purchase, if you call yourself a fan of brutal and technical death metal genre.

But I think that labelling Deivos as just plain technical death metal would be very unkind and unfair to them, as while listening to “Emanation from Below” I can hear so many different layers in the music than just complex structures and technical masturbation. No way can this band be folded in the same category as some other technical death bands, although definitely they do have a strong technical aspect in the music. But really in my opinion Deivos does everything in the right way, making sure that the songs has some meaning and are listenable, staying away from the unreadable and completely unmemorable chaos with millions of riffs and sounds per track. There’s never really the feeling of “what do fuck is going on here?”, which I sometimes have, when am forced to listen to technical death bands. Of corpse there are some very complex structures and technical parts like the drumming, which is just superb, full of great rhythms, breaks, many fantastic arrangements, but it is not over the edge. Besides, Deivos really fuckin crushes with massive riffing, many slower and damn heavy parts, which often will just force you to bang the head and then they break all the hell loose with furious and maniacal speed. Obviously the whole stuff is as powerful as you can only desire, so I’m into it completely! And you also will, if you’re into the likes of Sinister, Suffocation, Diabolic, Malevolent Creation, Aeon, Hate Eternal and other such killer death bands.

It is really difficult to pick up one or two standout tracks from “Emanation from Below”, as the whole album is very even, very tight and high quality. Maybe because there’s just about 30 minutes of music, it goes through your neck quickly as hell, so you don’t even have to time to think and pick up your favourite moments, so many of them are here! But well, I tried to dismember the music (hehe) and I must admit that there are so many killer ideas there, so many fantastic pieces, so many details that I cannot believe. And it still sounds brutal and straight forward, especially as quite a big part of “Emanation from Below” is so damn fast. Right away from the first song “Blackness Incarnate” it is a total death metal destruction. And you know what? It may sound slightly odd, but I think Deivos takes the influence equally from old and new school of death metal. Sure, they sound technical and have modern, powerful production, but many layers of their songs have the feeling from some early 90’s American death metal albums. And “Blackness Incarnate” is just a great example for that and it is a killer opener. And if you prefer slower and more massive sounds then I recommend you “Realm of Desecration” – what an awesome song, seven minutes long with some almost doomy parts here and there and generally with very dark and obscure feeling. Aaarrggghh, yeah, I am listening to this album like 20th time in the past three days and I must say that it doesn’t get any monotonous and boring, it still shreds and the energy erupts like crazy. I like it a lot.

Standout tracks: “Realm of Desecration”, “Blackness Incarnate”

Final rate: 87/100

Deivos - Hostile Blood

DEIVOS - Hostile Blood (Self released EP - 2004)

Deivos is a band, which nowadays is well established, having three full length albums under their belt. Recently, after I got the band’s latest CD, “Demiurge of the Void”, I also decided to give a spin to “Hostile Blood”, a demo or EP from 2003, which I remember I got from Deivos at that time. I wanted to listen to it, because honestly, despite the fact that I remember rating it quite high in my fanzine, I think I also did not actually listen to it for the last eight years or so. So, definitely the achievement of the third album was a good stimulating point to refresh my memories of “Hostile Blood”. And I must say that when I listen to this demo nowadays I am really impressed by it. I mean it does sound excellent, especially if you think that in 2003 a completely unknown band managed not only to achieve such a good and professional production, but also composed such a challenging, but brutal and well developed piece of death metal. I am almost as impressed as I was, when I was listening to Deception’s demos at the same time (and Deception is also Polish, what is really great!).
The music on “Hostile Blood” do not sound as 100% matured as from the bands like Cannibal Corpse, Suffocation, Sinister, etc – which would be some of the names, to which you could compare them to. Deivos still was in their infancy pretty much, having only one demo prior to “Hostile Blood” (“Praised by Generations” from 1999), but having that in mind I must say that the technical aspects of this 2003 release are very impressing. Each Deivos members impresses with good technical skills, and that includes damn fast and technical drumming as well as very good bassist’s playing, who comes up with really cool bass parts here and there (which would sometimes sound like from Death’s “Individual Thought Patters”)… And on top of all that – plus the very good sound of this demo – I must admit that the songs are really cool. Even for someone, who may not be 100% fan of technical death metal, they sound good. Deivos did not only focus on technical show off, but also remembered about having as many memorable parts as possible and not just blasts like crazy, but has quite many mid tempo fragments and especially if you listen to “Scarcity of Suffering” it may impress you a lot, with how this song sounds like and how it is built plus what type of riffing, guitar leads, etc. it has. Hmm, I dare to say that it is very rare to hear something so excellently composed from such a young band as Deivos were at that time. At few occasions the band comes up with more complex and technical as hell structures, breaking the riffs and rhythms in the way, which I am not usually a big fan of, but as I already said luckily they never “out do” that, if you know what I mean. And I mean that there’s no feeling of technical masturbation and of too many riffs and sounds per minute, which definitely is good, and that way the music remains memorable and maybe not catchy, but definitely is more straight forward. But you can be sure that the whole music is very tight, very brutal and massive. I do am impressed with such tracks as “Hostile Blood” and the mentioned “Scarcity of Suffering”.
So, I can definitely say that “Hostile Blood” survived the test of time very well. It is really good material, so it is worth to be looked for. I have the first press self released CDR copy, but I know that the Bulgarian Butchery Music re-released it on CD with a couple of demo tracks, so you may be luckily and still find a copy of it somewhere.

Final rate: 70/100

Funeral Whore - Step Into Damnation

FUNERAL WHORE - Step Into Damnation (CHAOS Records - CD 2012)

“Inhale the violence and smell the gore of the death squad!”

Funeral Whore has popped up several times before I got this debut full length album of theirs. Prior to that I unfortunately missed all the demos of Funeral Whore, but managed to purchase “Two Morbid Ways to Die” split EP with Profanal, which was kinda cool and promised there are two, completely new, but hopeful bands. I guess you know already that it’s yet another band from the current wave of old styled death metal bands and as such it only depends on you, whether you’re in mood for another such band. Personally I never have enough of good music, so once I listened to this Dutch crew I liked their music. Despite its unoriginality…

And this unoriginality of Funeral Whore’s music may be the main problem, which many of you, even myself, might have, when listening to “Step Into Damnation”. The fact is that quite often, more than in some other bands, the music just sounds like the band has cut off the riffs from band X, band Y, band Z and glued them all together into their own songs. This impression comes to my mind quite repeatedly and it erupts especially, when I listen to “El Salvador Death Squad” or “The Bitch Died”. Well, listen to these tracks and tell me if you don’t know some of their riffs already? Whether it sounds like Autopsy, old Death, old Asphyx, Grave, Bolt Thrower or whatever, the resemblances are sometimes just too obvious and the riffs too close to some originals, being on the verge of simple copy. Luckily (for myself and Funeral Whore hehe) this complaint, which I have towards them, do not really disturb me in enjoying the album, as I still tend to listen to “Step Into Damnation” regularly and with a lot of pleasure. I don’t know why really, but it may be due to the fact that I just really like the way Funeral Whore managed to resurrect the old school spirit in their music? I mean those songs really do break necks and smell like rotten flesh! There is killer feeling and atmosphere in this music and maybe this is why I like it.

Each song is just a paragon classic death metal tune. They’re mainly mid paced, very heavy, very dark and obscure, violent… man, the songs are obviously memorable, in terms of the catchiness of the riffs and whole feeling. The music is simple, but effective, it drives you insane for headbanging and really it just sounds as good – sometimes even better – as many of the best bands from the current death metal scene. Definitely it is a good accomplishment for Funeral Whore, but hopefully for their second album they will be able to pick up some more originality and have more of their own personality. But OK, I am not moaning, all in all I did listen to “Step Into Damnation” many, many times now and I did enjoy it. Definitely I can recommend this CD to all of those, who like their death metal to be ugly, morbid and obscure.

Standout tracks: I’m not gonna mention any; they’re all pretty solid and none of them stands above the rest with some extraordinary.

Final rate: 70/100