Bloodbath - Nightmare Made Flesh

BLOODBATH - Nightmare Made Flesh (CENTURY MEDIA - CD 2004)

Let me write now few words on one of the best death metal albums of the recent years. You may feel a bit skeptical towards bands / side projects like Bloodbath and don’t take them so seriously. It’s your choice, but personally I don’t care about calling them “all star band” or whatever, I also don’t care if it’s their main band or not. The music is what counts and surely Bloodbath released some seriously killer albums. “Nightmare Made Flesh” is my favourite CD from them and honestly, for me this stuff is close to perfection. There’s a bunch of great songs attacking mercilessly one after another, with killer riffage, super tight performance, neat production and really vicious sounding vocals of Peter Tägtgren, who joined Bloodbath for this album, replacing Mikael Akerfeldt. There’s absolutely nothing what I would not like about “Nightmare Made Flesh”, yes!

Bloodbath did not reinvent the wheel with “Nightmare Made Flesh”. They did not come up with anything super sophisticated. What I like about it though is how killer the songwriting here is, as the band came up with plenty of super fuckin awesome riffs that are often catchy, but aggressive, nasty and crushing as hell. And they always force you to bang the head like crazy, as the sound of this album is truly powerful and vicious. Bloodbath composed great songs, filled with fantastic arrangements, and along brutal stuff you’ll find here also some nice harmonies, guitar leads and so on. In result, every song sounds special. Maybe some of you will miss a bit of that primitive and harsh nature of underground death metal, but let’s just say that with such spectacular albums it doesn’t really matter. For me it all sounds like Bloodbath tried to add something original to the old death metal skeletons and damn, this is why “Nightmare Made Flesh” is above 99% of old school death metal albums. They did succeeded and nailed it perfectly.

Great musicianship, killer riffs, fantastic arrangements… yes, it’s all here. But also great diversity, so 45 minutes and 12 songs go fast and never bore. There’s super fast, nasty and aggressive stuff, there’re more catchy and groovy mid paced riffs that have such a great feeling and you will bang your skull when listening to such “Eaten”, I am sure. And there’re plenty of melodic songs as well. The number of songs that will stay in your head and cause devastation in it is great – you have such monstrous pieces like “Cancer of the Soul, “Eaten” (best Bloodbath song ever with killer gory lyrics!), “The Ascension”, “Soul Evisceration”, “Outnumbering the Day”. These are my favourites, but how can I not recommend also such “Brave New Hell” or any other song on this album, really??

The best thing to do is to play it loud. You’ll feel its enormous energy and onslaught. Just be careful not to hurt your neck too much. Damn good album!

Standout tracks: “Cancer of the Soul, “Eaten”, “The Ascension”, “Soul Evisceration”, “Outnumbering the Day”

Final rate: 90/100