Entrails - Berzerk

ENTRAILS - Berzerk (METAL BLADE - 7"EP 2014)

Entrails surely is among my favourite new Swedish bands, which are playing death metal based on the classic recipes. They unleashed three killer and worthy albums, some demos and splits… and now I’m listening to a 7”EP “Berzerk”, which Metal Blade released in 2014, in 500 copies limitation. Ha, would you believe that Metal Blade is releasing old school death metal singles again haha? Crazy world. Anyway, it took me some time, before I finally found a copy of this single (cheers, Ra, you’re the DUDE!), so I am very happy to own a white vinyl, which is limited to 100 copies only (and handnumbered).

Anyways, “Berzerk” brings two songs. Side A contains the title track and it’s something what we all expect to hear from Entrails, so this is slightly melodic, but damn aggressive and powerful, ravaging death metal in the old school Swedish death metal vein. This is great song, indeed, I love the opening melodic theme and then how it turns into killer, crushing beast. There’s a lot of diversity in this song, I almost feel like it’s slightly too short, as so much is going on here that it could easily have been a minute longer… At the same time this song repeats some of the Swedish death metal clichés, so you have melodic beginning, then more aggressive tune, memorable, repetitive chorus… Yeah, it’s very typical, but damn, it’s awesome anyway. And side B contains a cover of Swedish band called Heavy Load, called “Dreaming”. I don’t know this band, as I am not a fan of power metal, so you could only imagine how weird and unexpected this choice is for me. On the other hand it can be more interesting to play song like this than a hundredth cover tune of Entombed or Nihilist, right? And surely such more unusual covers fit well the 7” singles format. Anyway, it sounds way better than I expected; Entrails obviously played it death metal way, with harsh vocals, gloomy atmosphere… This song has a strong melodic touch, is rather slow, but works great with that Swedish death metal sound… yeah, it turns out that hard rock / power metal when played death metal way can sound damn fuckin cool.

Final rate: 80/100