Bloodbath - Survival of the Sickest (2022)

As a fan of both Nick Holmes AND Bloodbath, I was excited to hear what could be produced with them working together, especially since I had only been used to hearing his harsher death vocals over the earlier, slowest, death/doom Paradise Lost stuff. Grand Morbid Funeral sort of gave me what I wanted, but The Arrow of Satan is Drawn was a case of very diminishing returns, and frankly I felt like the band was trying to mold itself away from that well-produced, groovy death metal that put its all-star lineup on the map once again with another entity. Survival of the Sickest is a bit of a rebound from all that, and it's the collaboration I WANTED to hear once I knew Nick was joining the band, taking me back to the great, morbid fun riffing and production I enjoyed on discs like The Fathomless Mastery or Nightmares Made Flesh.

That's not to say it drops off the more atmospheric, filthy elements from the prior to records, it just takes them and places them sparingly into the core of what made Bloodbath so great to begin with. The Jonas Renkse bass here is super ruddy and filthy, and Anders and Tomas are just chopping the axes up between great old US or Swedish death metal riffing, tried and true with little flights of atmospheric leads that erupt at just the right time over some protracted Nick Holmes growl which he often layers above the syllabic grunting of the verses and chorus. Part of me had hoped Jonas and Anders would at least continue together in this band if not Katatonia...it seems unlikely, but if this is going to be their swan song, then it's well worthwhile. Not to diminish the contributions of the rest...Martin Axenrot's drumming is muscular, grooving and a perfect accompaniment to the churning, Morbid Angel-like grooves in "Dead Parade" or the whirlwind chaos assault of "Malignant Maggot Therapy". Tomas and Anders have more riffs and zippy evil leads than a shelf full of OSDM classics...

...and Nick has TRULY found his stride here, sounding just as awesome here as any of the older albums with Mikael or Peter singing. It's fun to hear those longer growls in faster-paced music, and if I had ever any question of him fitting in with this band that is now officially crushed, because he's fuckin' great. Survival of the Sickest isn't the catchiest death metal record of all time, but it's deliciously old school in all the best ways where that ancient sound had just started to convert to the brutality of the 90s and 00s. This is definitely not your stock Swedish overdrive sound circa Entombed, it's got a little bit of that inspiration but it's much more fun and groovy, with a guitar tone and writing style that don't necessarily place it so much geographically as it does chronologically. 45 minutes of fun that should satisfy anyone into Cannibal Corpse, Morbid Angel, Edge of Sanity, Hypocrisy, Vader, and death metal in general.

Verdict: Win [8/10]

https://www.bloodbath.biz/

Autopsy vs. Bloodbath EP (2017)

Beyond the fact that the Autopsy vs. Bloodbath split automatically warrants attention for featuring a pair of the genre's hottest commodities, gruesome US legends Autopsy and Swedish all-star retro-death masters Bloodbath, there's a bit more of a gimmick to this 7" in than might first appear. The Californians are covering one of their own member's old bands, also called Bloodbath, and the Swedes are covering the opening track "Blood Bath" off the debut album To the Gory End by the UK veteran death metallers Cancer. It's quick, it's silly, and it's more than likely to be soaked in viscera and rack up the cost of more than a few body bags in the process, and to be frank I rather like this kind of 'creative' vision for a collectors' item, rather than just a band pressing a couple tunes off an album onto 7" for shits and giggles...a practice that has thankfully become scarcer now that sales of vinyl are back in full swing.

Danny Coralles had been with Autopsy for pretty much all its full-length albums and the the vast majority of the band's history, so it's cool to them throwing up a cover for one of his early demo bands, and this one is taken from that Bloodbath's initial 1986 demo Fuck Society. As you might guess it's gnarly, fast-paced crossover thrash but now being given that additional splatter effect from Chris's vocals which probably give it a little more personality than it deserves, because the music for "Fuck You!!!" itself is bog standard and predictable in the rhythm department, with a nice, wild lead attached that is its only saving grace. It's also not quite living up to the horror/slasher elements hinted at by the cover, but this is balanced out by the far cooler Cancer cover by the Swedes and 'Old Nick' Holmes, which is meatier, morbid and ominous in a way that the original only brushed upon. In fact I enjoyed the "Blood Bath" cover more than anything off the band's most recent album of originals, The Arrow of Satan is Drawn. It's dumb, bludgeoning, evil with the little synthesizers, and Nick's voice sounds good and ugly and really drives it through the cemetery ditch.

But that's all there is to it...under six minutes of material, pressed by Peaceville and sent out to the rabid legions of fans, who will probably leave it in the sleeves and plastic as a curiosity to rummage through, and rarely will anyone listen to it. What I personally got out of this is that I'd love to hear Bloodbath record an entire album of old death metal covers, especially if they keep them from the lesser tier acts out of Europe and the US. This one sounds great and I'd urge every fan of the band to at least check it out streaming online somewhere. The cover image is pretty cool too, with that retro slasher vibe but I just don't know that Autopsy's choice even tunes into much thematically, and that gives a slight imbalance to the whole product for me, although I understand how it works into the 'joke' of the release.

Verdict: Indifference [5.5/10]

http://www.bloodbath.biz/
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100050176223094

Bloodbath - The Arrow of Satan is Drawn (2018)

The Arrow of Satan is Drawn is one of those albums I want so hard not to feel disappointed with that I've burned out trying. Ostensibly the record that would really capitalize on the band's direction from Grand Morbid Funeral, there was only one lineup change here with Joakim Karlsson of Craft stepping into Per Eriksson's slot on the second guitar. I was truly hoping that 'Old Nick' Holmes would settle into his sophomore outing with the supergroup and crush this out of the park, and that the riffs would gel a little better than they had on the 2014 album, back to the level achieved with their earlier lineups on records like The Fathomless Mastery and Nightmares Made Flesh, but what comes across here is a jumble of ideas that just doesn't quite come together for me until it's too late.

Aesthetically, there a number of positives to this latest Bloodbath outing. The cover artwork is interesting and disturbing. The title is cool. The commitment to an even more repulsive production than Grand Morbid Funeral could have wound up something compelling. Nick's grainy growls still felt like a fresh change of pace from the more polished gutturals used in the past by Mikael and Peter during their tenure within the group. The lyrics maintain that vibe of recapturing a lot of the death metal tropes of the 90s, which really remains the whole point of this project. The production, while looser and more murky than any of the prior albums, does have the necessary punch to impress Swedish tone-a-philes, and they manage to spruce it all up with some atmospheric, higher pitched guitars that occasionally add a level of creep to the proceedings. But fuck if this album takes so long to deliver anything of any lasting value...the first half of it is almost completely devoid of the good riffs that stick to the ears for more than a couple moments.

Where is the "Year of the Cadaver Race" for this album? The "Outnumbering the Day"? "The Soulcollector"? Or "Devouring the Feeble"? Too few of the riffs present on The Arrow of Satan is Drawn are worthy of even sharing the same cemetery plots as some of their predecessors, and so the album has to aim for a more total atmospheric package that contains a lot of humdrum guitars which are unfortunately serviced as well by the crunch of the tone as they ought to have been. Granted, it's not the most roughshod recording in the band's catalog...Resurrection Through Carnage is much more cheap and torn sounding, but the issue here is that with the exception of the melodies or the disjointed leads that might explode over the meatier rhythm guitars, none of the progressions really stand out beyond the billion or so records out of Europe that have come along to share in the worship of the Swedish forebears like Entombed, Dismember and Carnage. Energy isn't the issue, since the production gives it plenty of hellish swerve, but the riffs feel too hastily thrown together as if just anything would do because HEY WE'RE BLOODBATH.

Even when they seem to get something really going in "Bloodicide" with those great, almost cosmic melodies, the rhythm guitars are just too mediocre. The latter half of the album is a little tighter and more appreciable, and they do try some varied song structures you haven't heard before in tunes like "Wayward Samaritan" and "Deader", but I was always left feeling like I'm hanging, that the results could have been so much better if Blakkheim and company just did a couple more run-throughs at the idea-stage, changing some of the chords here or there or the order at which they pummel through the track. I'm also just not convinced Holmes is the best man for the job here, as much as I've enjoyed a lot of his early Paradise Lost growls (and his other Gothic vocals), there's little to the rhythm and meter of his delivery that thrills me. It's gravely and grim like the path up to the mortuary, but once you've heard a couple syllables and sustains it gets old pretty fast.

This is far from a terrible album, but it's somewhat undercooked to my ears, and while this might have been a purposeful stylistic choice, to just scrabble together some death metal jams and go play a couple festivals, to not overthink it, I think it wound up in the worst of their full-lengths to date. Almost all the components were there for something great, but the execution escaped me.

Verdict: Indifference [6.75/10] 

http://www.bloodbath.biz/

Bloodbath - Grand Morbid Funeral (2014)

I admit to being a little swept up in the 'guess who our new singer is?' gimmick Bloodbath was spinning up until the announcement of Nick Holmes earlier this year. Not so much that I was obsessively checking for clues, but when they were presented I would follow them to the natural conclusions, one of which was that the veteran Paradise Lost crooner was going to shed off his Goth Hetfield tone and return to the growls of his mainstay's formative period, which if you ask almost anyone still remains their most notable phase, self included. My immediate reaction was 'this is going to sound like Vallenfyre... Nick is a little jealous of the attention Gregor has gotten, and so is taking up the reins of nostalgia himself.' But of course Bloodbath is already a well-established act in its own right, having produced a number of great albums which don't rely solely on the retro thing but actual riff-writing, genuine energy and excitement. So this was actually quite an interesting team up...and it works to a point.

Musically, where Bloodbath have come up in the past with a number or fairly ingenious grooves or melodic spearheads that characterized their songs among a very busy flock of Swede impersonators and throwbacks, I feel that Grand Morbid Funeral is their album most interchangeable with a huge number of their peers...the songs here could have been written by Revel in Flesh, or Entrails, or any other bootlickers of Entombed and/or Dismember and nobody would know the difference. Like the breaks in "Total Death Exhumed", or the opening barrage in "Famine of God's Word" where the guitars go off on their own for a few seconds to showcase that thick rhythm tone; both could have appeared on a hypothetical Clandestine 2.0. But that's not to say they aren't written at a slightly higher level than the standard knockoffs in the sound, and where Bloodbath balance it out is in the amount of variation. You could trace all the songs to particular sources, perhaps, and yes many of those would be Swedish, but one area in which the record excels is how each of the tunes does not seem like a repeat of the others. They'll go for dire, brooding atmospherics in one tune, gut tearing tremolo guitars in another, and nary a tune goes by without some sticky riff erupting somewhere. 

The leads and melodies are solid, and unlike Vallenfyre they don't go too far into old Paradise Lost worship, preferring instead to incorporate a more airy, light death/doom sense to bridge elements in tunes like "Mental Abortion" which prove among my favorite individual moments of the recording. Solos might feel frivolous, but they definitely reek of the excess we used to love in the 80s, albeit shorter here. The guitar tones wrap the entire affair into a very consistent feel, despite the gulfs in pacing and structure. Despite the seasoned craft Anders exhibits in creating an album as a whole, I did feel there were a number of excessively bland note progressions, specifically in the d-beat driven parts, which sort of balanced off my appreciation for the better bits. Had I stopped listening to death metal of the Swedish inclination after about 1993 and then picked it back up with Grand Morbid Funeral, then I might find it more of an engaging memory trip, but I've been inundated with the stuff for a good decade now, 100s of bands clinging to the same tones and riff techniques without even a spark of imagination, promos piling up. Color me jade, and for at least part of its run time, this record just doesn't deal with it more spectacularly than the majority. Granted, Bloodbath have arguably more rights to this than others, and have excelled within the same parameters in the past, but they often tempered the sound with more Floridian or mildly brutal influences and it just felt fresher...

Grand Morbid Funeral, while good, just doesn't have a bunch of songs I want to keep coming back to time and time again. It's a worthwhile 46 minutes, and won't disappoint you if you're really dying for more of this, but I had higher hopes going in than enjoyment coming out. Now, this is no fault of the vocals whatsoever. Nick Holmes certainly delivers, he's still 'got it', and his more gravelly, ugly, imperfect timbre makes for a refreshing alternative to Akerfeldt's broader guttural palette. The drums and bass sound fine, Renkse owning up to the Swe-tone with fatter, plunky bass lines, but apart from 4-5 of the tunes where Anders and Per make more compelling choices with the guitars, I found myself 'zoning out' more often than the other full-lengths. I should mention that it is slightly darker and more atmospheric...the tongue-in-cheek quality of the prior albums is somewhat supressed, and it strives to capture the din of that old late 80s/early 90s death metal production rather than the 'punch' of previous albums. The lyrics are decent, slightly more thoughtful than you'd expect. I also like it more than either of the Vallenfyre albums. I guess the real question is: when do we hear retro death projects from Stephen Edmondson and Aaron Aedy? Gauntlet has been thrown, guys.

Verdict: Win [7.5/10] (the pulse receding)

http://www.bloodbath.biz/

Bloodbath - The Fathomless Mastery (2008)

Now, I'm not normally the sort of 'center of the universe' critic who thinks entirely in absolutes and rants endlessly for pages about those opinions which deviate from my own. I don't haphazardly slap a zero on a record just because a friend of a friend's metalcore sister who watches MTV once said At the Gates sounded 'pretty sweet', nor do I shower glowing praise upon every 11th generational extreme metal record shat down the pipe, just because this or that forum/clique/club/a-hole thinks its cool to wear the patch this month. I know you've all got your Neil Diamond vinyls stashed away in that closet, fuckers! That said, I would find it incredibly difficult to take seriously anyone who can look me in the eye and tell me they think a Bloodbath album doesn't bring at least SOMETHING to the table that they enjoy. Again: no absolutes. They do not by any means write timeless, legendary albums like Left Hand Path, Realm of Chaos or Altars of Madness, but to deny that they've got their fingers on the blueprints to what makes an 'old school' death metal song sound brutal, fun and inspired without the usual stupidity would be a crime. The fact that they kickstarted the project well before whatever latest round of Dismember or Morbid Angel clones this or that cyber-posse holds dear this week, is just icing on the victim's corpse...

Sure, the Swedish veterans might have an inherent recipe for success. They probably have an advantage due to the members' participation in other, more financially independent acts. They may actually give a shit about not having the production sound like it came out of a dumpster in a trailer park, and have the means and connections to make it happen (even within their own foster). Yeah, so what? They put in the work those many years, and they reaped the rewards. The truth is, there isn't a member of this band who hadn't participated on some fantastic records long before this team up was conceived, and it's just not a surprise to me that I haven't met a Bloodbath long player that I didn't get a kick out of. 'Commercializing retro death metal'? With three full-length albums in 16 years? Hardly. At any rate, The Fathomless Mastery is another jewel in the crown of what makes this group so consistent. They care about what they're doing to the point that, even at their most conservative or uninspired, like a loping 2-3 chord groove which far too many bands have made entire careers out, they manage to put some small quality spin, be it a bend, measure-ending note choice, or a quick transition to snap the listener right back to intention and not repeatedly bludgeon him/her with the blandness. This is also a further transformation of their sound, and not for the worse: Resurrection Through Carnage was raw and primordial 1990 Swedish death metal, Nightmares Made Flesh took that and implanted a cleaner character with better riffs and structure, and this disc applies a slightly more polished sheen of technicality and variety which by no means detracts from the core concept.

Is it a paean to Dismember, Carnage and Entombed? To an extent, and that was clearly the impetus behind the band in the late 90s; but I actually got more of an impression of earlier Necrophobic meets faster Hypocrisy with some Grave-like grooves, with the obvious Floridian roots exposed (which could be said of almost any death metal group). Techniques are typical: memorable, textured tremolo patterns burst across the sepulcher-scape or slow to a mid-paced, churning cemetery swagger, while the grooves are well built but painfully simple, to the point that they're all going to evoke instant callbacks to the audiences' favorite genre records of old, without too much finger pointing. Pacing is evenly distributed in most of the songs, not to mention the album as a whole, and there's always going to be some rhythmic pattern in there that you didn't quite expect, to keep it fresh and imposing even when there's no denying its paraphrased origins. Mikael Åkerfeld's growling might not be to everyone's taste, but he definitely sounds more sinister and excitable than you'd expect given his more ponderous, meandering past gutturals over the harder Opeth material. Per and Blakkheim don't attempt to assuade the listener with their technical capability, but instead focus on rounding out each rhythmic script with stylish leads and what must be their clearest guitar tone yet, more on the level of the Unblessing the Purity EP than anything previous. Riffs and drums generate atmosphere through both their impenetrable, unerring confidence and just the right relish of reverb to tie it all together.

All without sounding wimpy, plastic, or over-processed. The chords still have enough edge to them that those into the older records, or really anything from the Swedish mainstays (Unleashed, Entombed, Grave, etc) would approve, and they certainly continue the Cannibal Corpse/Malevolent Creation influence that I felt pretty strongly on the EP. Renkse's bass tone here sounds positively livid even though it still tends to disappear into the rhythm guitar riffing patterns, and Martin Axenrot is nearly mechanical by this point, though he keeps the upper range of the kit splashy and rough enough to contrast the robotic consistency with which he hammers out the kicks and tom rolls. I personally enjoyed the constant, dour and melancholic sense of melody exploding everywhere...it only takes a simple stretch of notes to give the tunes that added depth. I also loved the tendency to briefly squirm into a more technical/brutal area with those mid-90s squeals built into the riffing brickwork/grooves ("Mock the Cross" being the prime example). So too must I point out for a band that was put together mostly for 'fun', the lyrics are just as serious as you'd expect from most top end death metal (Vader, etc) without traipsing entirely into torture/gore porn territory. Over all I'd consider them the equal of Deicide and Morbid Angel with a few memorable song titles like "Wretched Human Mirror".

This isn't quite as good as Nightmares Made Flesh, if only because the riffs on tunes like "Year of the Cadaver Race" are their best yet, but certain tunes here like "Mock the Cross", "At the Behest of Their Death" or the choppy, nearly djentish-prefaced "Devouring the Feeble" are all just as awesome as when I first tore the plastic off my copy, and I'd be hard-pressed to find a runt anywhere in the litter. So I dig it only a fraction less than the sophomore. It's death metal for just about anyone who actually likes Swedish, Polish or older US death metal, throwing in obvious nods to dozens of forerunners without trying to bite them off 100%. This isn't a case of 'let's remake Life is an Everflowing Stream or Dark Recollections directly, but chucks them into the same cauldron as a hundred other 1987-1995 inspirations and gets to work honoring in lieu of robbing. Bloodbath sounds like other bands, but it also sounds like Bloodbath. I could name two dozen trending underground heroes that can't say the same, and so could you. Well worth hearing, and if you've given the group a pass due to not digging Katatonia or Opeth or October Tide or whatever honest or political/scenester reason, then give them another try. There is surely some common ground here you'll enjoy whether you dub yourself a fan of new or old death metal.

Verdict: Win [8.25/10] (predators abide)

http://bloodbath.biz/

Bloodbath - Unblessing the Purity EP (2008)

Unblessing the Purity was the first release in a busy year for the Swedish all-star death metal project Bloodbath, which alone would have made up for the four-year hiatus since Nightmares Made Flesh, but I'm happy they didn't just stop here. Four tunes, and a superior short-player to their original Blessed Death EP in both composition and effectiveness, really refining this group's ability to draft a death metal tune with some depth and melody that celebrates the original influences to which they pay homage, without proving too much of a direct ripoff of any of their countrymen/forebears. After hearing this, I was extremely stoked for The Fathomless Mastery, which did not disappoint, and it's yet another reason I actually wish Bloodbath was 'mainlined' by its constituent members, instead of being this project that gets shelved for large periods of time (the current hiatus having lasted around five years). Then again, if they were churning out discs annually or bi-annually, they might not be so good...but they don't seem to have come close to exhausting their riff stores yet.

Anyway, Bloodbath might lack a little in the creative department, and that was the point since inception, but the amount they are called out for it seems quite disproportionate when one considers that their most vocal detractors spend about 50% of their time listen to direct knockoffs of early 90s black/death metal. It's okay to do when you're on some smaller cult label and pulling in audiences of 15 at a gig, but not when you're a member of Opeth or Katatonia! Rrrrriight, and let's not forget, forming in 1998, Bloodbath were already well ahead of the game, in some cases only 5-6 years after the records they were worshiping! Sure, there isn't a lot here that you wouldn't have already heard on a Dismember, Carnage, Hypocrisy, Entombed, Edge of Sanity or Necrophobic record over a decade before this, but Unblessing the Purity doesn't seem so much like recycling as rekindling its beloved influences. You'll immediately notice a more mature structure to the songwriting which doesn't seem like a repeat of Resurrection Through Carnage or Nightmares Made Flesh, with a busier use of melody as an atmospheric ingredient (as in "Weak Aside"). The rhythm guitar tone isn't quite so concentrated on being ripping and raw in the traditional Sunlight fashion, but dialed back a little in the mix, which fits the more intricate picking of a lot of riffs here. I've heard this material described as more 'technical' than the prior albums, and that's not a false statement, but it's not to the degree where they're exploring the clinical/tech-death brutal death metal indulgence...this is very firmly old school death metal, it just doesn't settle for being so simple that it borders on stupid.

Guitars, guitars! Tunes like "Blasting the Virginborn" really capture a lot of versatility, from the unapologetic Krisiun blasting of the opening riff to the death & roll grooves and bluesy but cryptic lead passages, while others like "Sick Salvation" seem like they're just dowsed in an added dimension of constant atmosphere being provided through the reverb on the drums and guitars. There are a lot of chug-to-trill rhythms that are redolent of Cannibal Corpse's cult favorite The Bleeding, and Mikael also seems to channel a little of Napalm Death's direct vocal gruffness in places. Not every riff is a winner, but the majority of them fit together snugly and constantly offer the ear something fresh and potentially unexpected. Renkse's bass lines sound better here than I think I've ever heard them before (at least in this band), with a balanced distortion to them that never seems over the top, but keeps them heavy and grating against the clearer presence of the rhythms. Axenrot sounds fucking unbelievable, especially on a lot of the slower grooves where's he complementing the central rock beat with faster double bass and then seamlessly introducing blasts and breaks. But really, Bloodbath always thrive off their guitars more than anything; both Blakkheim and Dan Swano's replacement Per 'Sodomizer' Eriksson (Katatonia, Genocrush Ferox) deliver constantly thrills.

The ambient touches, like at the close of "Mouth of Empty Praise" with the male chant, are well enough implemented that I'd have enjoyed hearing a lot more of them, and the lyrics, while often minimalistic, are pretty blasphemic as a rule here..."Blasting the Virginborn" calling out Christian falsehoods, and "Mouth of Empty Praise" offering lip service to a number of infernal figures. Almost to the point where it feels like there is a more cohesive concept happening than your usual Bloodbath record, which happens to reflect the cover artwork quite well. It's not perfect, but just fucking great, well-rounded death metal that I enjoy time and time again, like anything else they released after Breeding Death, and if you've been on the fence due to not liking the higher profile bands of several of the members, trust me when I say this is probably much more your style. In fact, I like Bloodbath more than anything Opeth has released since Blackwater Park, and even a number of the Katatonia offerings, so I really do wish they'd put out something more often...even if they don't reach the level of productivity achieved in 2008. Anyway, Unblessing the Purity is killer and just as worth owning as any of the full-length efforts.

Verdict: Win [8.5/10] (insurrection displayed)

http://bloodbath.biz/

Bloodbath - The Wacken Carnage (2008)

Popular bands = lame. I get it. Bands made up of dudes from various popular bands = DOUBLE LAME. Loud and clear! Just wanted to get that out of the way for all the closet trolls up front, and then to deliver a nice swift FUCK OFF! If you've written off Bloodbath for this reason, it's not my loss, because there's nothing more or less here than a group of skilled musicians & friends having a great time paying tribute to a style of music they love, that gave most of them their start, and writing some damn catchy tunes in the process. 2008 was a particularly great year to follow the Swedish 'supergroup', not only for two new studio recordings (The Fathomless Mastery and Unblessing the Purity), but also because they would unleash a pretty goddamn great sounding live album. In fact, I would not be exaggerating to claim this was one of the better produced and paced live sets I've heard on CD from any band in the genre...

There is the caveat that this was a little late in coming, recorded back in 2005 at Germany's metal Mecca and then mixed in 2008 for release, but it sounds just as effective in 2014. There are also the limitations most of these recordings present, in that you'll have to use your imagination to picture the band on stage, but you do also get a DVD included for when you're not listening to it in the car...thus The Wacken Carnage is already one step ahead of many of its peer releases. In fact, I doubt I'll ever purchase another live album which offers anything less than this very format, even if if sounds as fantastic as this one does. Now, this was the 'classic' Bloodbath lineup, with Mikael of Opeth handling the vocals, Blakkheim/Swanö on guitars, Renkse on bass and Axelrot on drums, so if you're not into Åkerfeldt's growling in comparison to his later replacement on Nightmares Made Flesh, I can understand some hesitation on hearing that material, but trust me when I say that the guy sounds fine and it makes little difference. What really took me by surprise was just how pungent and fuzzed out the guitars here sounded, just as much as either of the earlier studio albums and they frankly sound as clean as a studio overdub...to the credit of the band's stage techs and the mixers and engineers who worked on the final product. I suppose it's so thick and consistent that there lacks some dynamic range through the performance, but it's not necessarily a band I approach with that in mind...

Granted, the band had a limited amount of material to work with at the time, only the debut EP and two full-lengths under their belt, but they compact it all down to a 13-track extravaganza with nary a stinker in the lot. Even the Breeding Death material, which I consider their weakest, gets a nice injection of life, and it's represented in its entirety, with the rest of the set leaning more heavenly on Nightmares than Resurrection Through Carnage (sensible, that was their 'current' album for the performance), six choices from the former and three from the latter. There are some pretty glaring omissions, like "Year of the Cadaver Race" which has some of the best riffing they've ever written hands down, but I'm not complaining about what they muster up, and tunes like "Outnumbering the Day" and "Eaten" are practically worth the price alone. The drums pop right atcha, the guitars richer than hi-fiber oatmeal, the vocals pretty nihilistic and blunt though I can't say much for Mikael's on-stage personality (even when I've seen him with Opeth). Jonas doesn't develop much of a presence through the recording, but then even on their studio albums the bass is subordinate to the rhythm guitars so it wasn't like I expected much more. The tremolo melodies also don't stand out very much, often as gloomy as the chords, but these are really the only production issues and it's still vastly superior to most live sets I've seen or even heard from festivals...

The DVD is a little better yet, because you can see the guys traipsing around in their blood-spattered whites, but it's more impressive just that they're actually playing as tightly as the audio translates. I'm just used to hearing more flaws in a performance, but then it's probably not the most difficult material to reproduce for any of the involved parties. If you DO like randomness, jamming, inconsistencies, then admittedly this might not be for you, and if you hate Bloodbath to begin with then it goes without saying, but I have no regrets about any of the purchases of their stuff I made that year, and if you're down for some punchy throwbacks to the sounds of Dismember, Entombed and Unleashed in the early to mid 90s which don't sound as if they were recorded in a latrine, then these guys come immediately to mind. Nothing new or original, but they can write a goddamn riff that I'll remember 5 years later. Hell, 10 years. The Wacken Carnage isn't a purchase I'd make over any of the three studio full-lengths, but unlike some live recordings, I did feel that you got what you actually paid for.

Verdict: Win [7.75/10]

http://bloodbath.biz/

Bloodbath - Nightmares Made Flesh (2004)

Had you asked me a half decade ago, Resurrection Through Carnage would have been the Bloodbath record I championed as my favorite; but in the ensuing years I've found myself listening more and more to its predecessors, both of which exhibit stronger songwriting chops and a fraction more technicality that help to maintain interest. What's more, with Nightmares Made Flesh the Swedes seemed to transform from a 'supergroup homage' to an example of consummate professionalism in the field of death metal nostalgia. As overt as the influences are, many hailing from their very own country, with this album and its successor, I never really had the feeling that Bloodbath were perpetually 'living in the moment'. Unlike a lot of other throwback stylists, Nightmares Made Flesh doesn't feel like they're writing a record for 1993. It feels like they're writing one for the 21st century, which just happens to follow an 'ain't broke, don't fix it' mentality. Hell, by 1993, most of these guys were already putting out music...

This is better refined musically than its predecessor, which was far more of a chunky tribute to Swedish death luminaries like Entombed, Unleashed and Dismember. There were a lineup difference in that the band hired on Hypocrisy main man Peter Tägtgren to temporarily fill the shoes of Mikael Åkerfeldt, who was intensely busy with Opeth at the time; and Martin Axenrot (Witchery, Satanic Slaughter, etc) came on board so that they could have a full-time drummer, Dan Swanö focusing more on the guitar. These changes don't exactly factor into why I enjoy this record more, but certainly I felt that Peter had a better flexibility in his delivery than Mikael, even if his deep growl isn't quite so opaque and caustic. The riffs here are in general a little more frenetic and occasionally higher pitched in nature, and with Hypocrisy's diverse catalog and Peter's experience also in Pain, The Abyss and other projects, I can't think of anyone else more qualified to incorporate into ANY extreme musical project, even on the fly. Ultimately, I enjoyed his presence here more than Åkerfeldt on Breeding Death and Resurrection Through Carnage, but when Mike returned for The Fathomless Mastery, I wasn't exactly disappointed. Really, this shit isn't rocket science, either of the men could handle it, and Bloodbath is more about the riffs anyway.

Which is, of course, where this particular album excels. And there was no excuse for it not to, with two of the best songwriters in the country, Blakkheim and Dan Swanö laying into some corpulent grooves redolent of their peers in the 90s. Heartwork-era Carcass is a solid comparison, laced with the driving overtures of Entombed or Soulless-period Grave, and even culminating in a few individual riffs which feel like they could have been lifted off these bands' cult classic offerings. You can also here some slower Entombed or Bolt Thrower during the few sequences that reference death/doom on the latter half of the album, or even traces of latter-day Death in a few of the more clinical, busy note progressions in pieces like the opener "Cancer of the Soul". But Bloodbath is not beneath grafting a little creative editing of their own onto the style's blueprint, and so you end up with absolute fucking killer guitars like the tremolo picking sequence initiating "Outnumbering the Day" or that incredible, to-die-for d-beat beatdown groove in "Year of the Cadaver Race", which rivals almost anything on Clandestine or Wolverine Blues. I can't say that all of the guitars here are equally as ass-throttling and inspired, but you won't encounter a long, dry period without something entertaining...and across 12 tracks, that means quite a lot of fun.

FUN. Like, invigorating in that way you might have felt when first hearing the supergroup's ghoulish forebears during the actual 90s (if you were alive or of age to do so). But Bloodbath aren't just old hats and writing good songs, they've created an album here with timeless production values, clean enough to sate the fan of more modern/brutal death metal but still packing plenty of punch for the old timer. There's a reason why a lot of younger death metal fans I've come across, who seem to have little tolerance for the decades-old classics seem to be quite fond of this group even despite the lack of brain-spinning technicality they're accustomed to, and that once again points to the Swedes' decision to smooth out some of the grime and not shoot for the 1991 tape-reel production. Loud, pumping rhythm guitars warm and polished enough to wallop you with the deep end, but still very clear when they're racing off into some more intricate, melodic picking. The leads are also very well-defined, ripping and evil, the sort that fire up the excitement level well beyond what is already being played. That's another thing...most of the tunes here sound positively diabolic, due to the craftiness of the riff construction!

Fuck, these are all pretty mainstream dudes in Swedish metal who have broken big with softer acts like Katatonia, Pain and Nightingale, safe to play in front of your grandparents; so the fact that they can churn out wicked and imposing riffs better than the lion's share of 3rd generation Swedophiliacs the world over speaks volumes about how in tune they are with their backgrounds that inspired the project. For a project that's not even meant to be serious, the music here is molded with more passion and effort than you'd expect, and apart from a few lyrics (arguably), there's nothing so explicitly silly about this band. They don't saturate the songs' varied, visceral themes in the most disgustingly descriptive lyrics you get out of the competitive gore bands, but a tune like "Eaten" still makes me squirm a little in how it depicts cannibalistic desires from a perspective you normally don't experience. Or how about "Year of the Cadaver Race" in which undead livestock exterminate humanity. Eww! Truth be told, Nightmares Made Flesh is the total package, the sort of album you'd be proud to own had it come out 10 or 20 years prior, and proud to own now. I realize there's a small minority that will balk at the band because of its members or because retro death metal is utterly uncool, but if Bloodbath had arrived in 1992-4, the poster would very likely be on those same folks' walls, the tees proudly outgrown but displayed in their closets or carved into back patches for that inevitable midlife crisis when the khakis come off and the HORNS ARE THROWN.

So yeah, I have a great time with this record, but it'd be unfair to not point out the few deficiencies. For one, these riffs don't hit with a 100% success ratio, even though there's not really a noticeably 'weak' track over the dozen. A lot are just paraphrased from a few dozen of the obvious influences, from Morbid Angel to Entombed, so when you hear the truly amazing progressions (including those I mentioned earlier), they tend to really stand out and make you wish the rest were quite as great. Also, Jonas Renkse's bass playing, while loud enough, is dubiously dull and noncommittal. I know he's also involved with some of the guitars, backing vocals and overall songwriting...and that a lot of old death metal records don't themselves involve compelling or noteworthy bass playing; but a band like this which isn't thinking entirely in reverse could take an extra few days to pull up some half-decent lines and fills, which are treacherously few here. Otherwise, this is an album I can crank nearly a decade after its release date, inspired by material a decade older still, and it just feels timeless and engaging, despite its lack of novelty. A slab of semi-sickening, confident concussion for those who approach it from either the horror or headbanging angles.

Verdict: Win [8.5/10] (the pleasure of the torment)

http://bloodbath.biz/

Bloodbath - Breeding Death EP (2000)

Born of the minds of several of Sweden's most prominent metal musicians of the 90s, Bloodbath seemed poised for success from the moment of its conception, before even a track was laid down in the studio. That the four principals were all well acclimated to one another, and writing music here that came as a stark contrast to their more mainstream friendly outfits (Katatonia, Nightingale, and Opeth) was all the more reason for its existence. Jonas Renkse, Mikael Åkerfeldt, Dan Swanö, and Anders Nyström owe a lot to death metal. Its migration throughout Europe and the States (and beyond) is what led to their individual success in other projects. It's the camel they rode in on, regardless of whatever mutations their better known bands have undergone in the past decade or so.

That the debut with this project would be an EP titled Breeding Death seems rather obvious, and a wise decision to test the waters with a few tracks before committing to a larger project which would involve tours and several albums (having now all come to fruition). The goal here was to adapt the roots Swedish death metal of Grave, Entombed, Edge of Sanity, Unleashed, Hypocrisy, Grotesque and Dismember into the digestive tract of the big Y2K, and though they cannot be chiefly accredited with this sub-genre's rebirth and the inevitable scores of bands who would flock back to the style's dark waters in the 21st century, they certainly played their parts, on a high visibility label (Century Media) and reaping in many thousands of fans of their other bands to a sound they might have otherwise ignored. And in some, sad cases, a sound they probably ignore to this day outside of Bloodbath. It's true that bands like Vomitory, Fleshcrawl, Paganizer, Kaamos and their ilk had been kicking around the Swedish flavors already by this time, among others, but none have been quite able to break through.

In some ways, Bloodbath resembles its constituent members' other work through their individual roles. Mikael Åkerfeldt performs his fabled low end Opeth growling here without any need for 10+ minute long songs and vast acoustic interludes, and the others peep in once in awhile (all vocalists in their own right). Jonas and Dan return to the rhythm section they were once all too comfortable with, and Anders is in the drivers' seat with a slew of riffs that would do Grave or Dismember proud in 1990, with a little of the added atmospheric spin he might have picked up in his years of Diabolical Masquerade and Katatonia. Still, with all of the talent and the history behind the members, the compositions themselves fall rather flat.

Surely there are huge grooves and surges into the unbridled, old school riffing style that once made the format such an ominous venture into extremity. But it definitely edges on the 'been there, done that, not going to do it any better' mentality which might comfort the majority of retro death metal outfits, but doesn't offer much towards the more seasoned listener who might expect some manner of tweak to the genre. To be fair, this is the larval stage of the band, and their future full-lengths all manage to destroy this material, but "Breeding Death" and "Furnace Funeral" do little more than offer some standard, thick riffs over Mikael's level vocal battery that becomes somewhat monotonous. This guy's inflection is no Martin van Drunen or Chris Reifert, and it's no wonder he uses a lot more cleans in his other band. The middle track here, "Ominous Bloodvomit" benefits from a slightly cooler riff and thrust, and a nice mean groove that conjured up earlier Obituary, though it does sputter out into generic, brute filler at one point. The end of the track picks back up, however, and I found it the most memorable of the three.

Regardless of my own lukewarm reaction to this project's first offering, it is a success from the technical standpoints: semi-famous musicians getting together and rocking out a few old school tracks; delivering a modern and dark, if not distinct production; and building some excitement for a return to the style's halcyon days which were probably too quickly forgotten. Fuck, many of the great cult acts of the early Swedish death scene STILL lie in obscurity! Poor, poor Gorement. If you already own and enjoy Bloodbath's full-lengths like The Fathomless Mastery or Resurrection Through Carnage, then this EP is a curiosity that might be worth a few bucks. But if you haven't heard them at all, start with one of those albums first. One of the pressings of Resurrection Through Carnage even comes with Breeding Death as a bonus.

Verdict: Indifference [6.5/10] (I see undead despair)

http://bloodbath.biz/

Bloodbath - Resurrection Through Carnage (2002)

There are recipes for success and then there are recipes for success. Combine the talents of Jonas Renkse (Katatonia, October Tide), Blakkheim (Katatonia, Diabolical Masquerade), Mikael Akerfeldt (Opeth), and Dan Swanö (Edge of Sanity and a few hundred other bands) into a loving tribute to their death metal roots, then profit. The Breeding Death EP from 2000 was a nice teaser, but fortunately the band saw fit to record all new material for this full-length debut, which for a while, remained my favorite of this project's albums, though pretty recently I've come to the conclusion that its successors have indeed surpassed it.

Bloodbath were not out to win any awards for innovation, but to strip away the complexity of their current projects and have a good time writing what comes natural, old school Swedish death with the crunch on overdrive. That the songs are this polished is a testament to the compositional and production skills of its membership, but I wouldn't necessarily consider this a classic for the genre (and I think other retro Swedish death bands, like several of Rogga's projects, are superior).

The album begins with a nice fade in to "Ways to the Grave", a crushy blow to the skull with a nice creepy riff after the midpoint. "So You Die" begins with a tearing lead over a thick rhythm, then splitting off into some groovier segments. "Mass Strangulation" has a great, wailing atmosphere during its breakdown which is one of the more kickass moments on the album. "Death Delirium" is a fine track, highly reminiscent of old Entombed. I'll be honest, almost the entire album sounds like a sequel to Clandestine. But that's not a bad thing. Other standout tracks here include "The Soulcollector", the riffy "Bathe in Blood" and the brutal "Like Fire". It's good to hear Nystrom performing in a different style than his usual gothic/doom leanings, and Akerfeldt sounds absolutely intense in his vocals here, easily the rival of any of his Opeth growls.

Resurrection Through Carnage succeeds at its goal, and it's always great to hear a group of veterans put something like this together. The effort is sincere and should not only appease fans of the early Swedish bands, but perhaps even drag some fans of the members' newer works into the style. The day some Opeth scenester kids come up to me at the mall and tell me they've been listening to Dismember or Paganizer will be the day I can die happy.

Verdict: Win [8/10] (poisonous, vile obedience)

http://bloodbath.biz/