These Swedes for me set the Live Evil Festival in London late last year alight with their death thrash black arsenal of nasty, often breakneck paced metal madness. Quickly becoming something of an underground sensation, it’s therefore quite surprising that they are now on such a major label, but good on them, this music deserves more exposure.
The tracks ‘At Midnight I’ll Possess Your Corpse and ‘Under the Grudge’ remain from their demo release, but with the immediate introduction to the album with new track ‘Orexis’, you are pumped right from the get go and you will find unruly filth and fury. There is a cool guitar sound, some blackened and old school Swedeath chord progression and some nasty gnarly vocals to bolster your excitement. Vampire’s slower tunes remind me of some latter Darkthrone with a punk influence, but the faster tracks will take you to the reverb led sound of old school Swedish death but with more of an Antichrist flavour and finally rushing towards to early Celtic Frost and Repugnant material. The death gore and horror and neck wrenching addiction will continue with ‘Howl from the Coffin’ like some early Tribulation songs, which bring a sense of rotten death to these underground royals. The newer tracks certainly have increased in length compared to their demo, there is much more depth with these Swedes quite happily exploring different tempos and shape shifting arrangements and some of the guitar solos are really spot on when it comes to relevance within the tracks.
Some will label this death metal, some death thrash, but it’s a mix of everything cool that has come from Sweden over the past couple of decades and beyond. This will appeal to broad mix of black and death metal fans, as well as punk fans, its fury is unquestionable and its impact is invigorating. The underground buzz was and is certainly justified; miss this at your peril.
(8.5/10 Paul Maddison)
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