Formed in 2006 by drinking buddies, Sweden’s Zombified released their debut, ‘Zombified Slaughtermachine’, in 2010. Having no knowledge of this band or their debut, I could at least glean from their name that death metal was the order of the day; especially since the artwork for ‘Carnage Slaughter and Death’ is instantly identifiable as being by the same guy responsible for Grave’s last couple of sleeves. Cemetery zombies and human goo says it all, really. Upon learning that there are band members with associations to acts such as Paganizer, Ribspreader, Devian and Edge of Sanity(!), however, I was left in virtually no doubt as to what Zombified would specialise in.

‘Carnage Slaughter and Death’ quickly confirms the obvious, with some heavy, crusty sounding Swedish death metal. The riffs have that punkish quality, and at odd intervals, the vocals – as at the start of the opening track – sound quite like Glen Benton, with layered gutturals and screeches. Otherwise, an early Grave-like tendency reigns in vocal delivery. Musically, the prevalence of blasts within many passages brings to mind some of Vomitory’s work, although there is far less menace in the (triggered?) drum sound here. In the context of what Zombified is doing, this doesn’t prove 100% defining, as the riffs and delivery in general maintain a consistently bouncy element. At times capturing a feel not too far from some of Unleashed’s mid-90s forays there’s often an excuse to nod your head or tap your foot in time with the rumbling, rattling death. On the other hand, there are also some stabs at variety. ‘Suffering Ascends’, for instance, contains a cool, industrial thudding effect with impassive narration, whilst ‘Clenched Fist Vengeance’, has more than its fair share of slower grinding riffs which strangely have me thinking of Krisiun.

‘Reborn in Sin’ proves to be one of the most distinct tracks on the album, with some hints at Bolt Thrower. As well as the simple but great riffing, there is also an excellent bass break about half way through this one. Somewhat strangely, it’s the slower and upbeat passages which I prefer to the faster ones in this band’s sound. For myself, this is in fact more than somewhat strange: it’s practically unheard of. Justifying this response are tracks like ‘The Flesh of the Living’, which materialises like the life and soul of the party, and ‘The Last Stand’, which combines some more of those open sounding chords with a nice, slow atmospheric section. In contrast, ‘Slayer Fashion’ has more emphasis on blustering speed and those blasts, which by the end of the album I find extremely tedious. My layman’s impression is that production-wise, either the snare and kick drum are merging, or one is clacking away loudly at the expense of the other. Now, I don’t mean to knock the drummer (whose performance does the job nicely in every other respect) but surely he would intend for these parts to create a jarringly hard contrast? For whatever reason, they don’t.

Aside then from my annoyance at a plague of homogenous sounding blast beats – which other people might not mind – another, bigger problem affects ‘Carnage Slaughter and Death’. Frankly, there are too many tracks. It’s only by two or three but the problem is that for all its hooks and gnarly charm, the odd by-numbers composition makes the album far longer than it needs to be. A case in point would be ‘Endless Days of Wrath’; the type of four minutes which contributes to making the overall experience drag on. With a bit of tweaking and trimming down, Zombified’s second effort would undoubtedly have been getting an improved score. It has its moments, but could (easily) be better.

(6/10 Jamie Wilson)

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