Decameron - My Shadow... (1996)

Decameron was a Swedish melodic death/thrash (slightly black) metal band, which released a couple demos in the early 90’s and one single album in 1996 called, ‘My Shadow…’ before breaking up permanently. Like so many others, the band’s sound was clearly influenced and at times mimicked Dissection’s two classic early albums though I hardly find that to be a negative thing since everyone back then was influenced by their creations and pretty much everyone produced absolute masterpieces as a result. Decameron was no exception.

‘My Shadow’ is loaded with some absolutely massive solos/riffs that have plenty of rhythm changes with thrashy/death metal melodies from Johannes Losbäck and Jonny Lehto, harshly screamed vocals and audible bass work from Johaanes’ brother Alex and a fine drum performance from Tobias Kellgren. Each and every song truly stands out with the overflow of melody, energy and overall conviction these guys put into their music though to be fair the true stand outs are, ‘Carpe Nocem,’ ‘Our Time Has Come,’ ‘Sexual Immortality’ and ‘Satanized;’ in fact this last song is a cover version of sorts of a song from a band of same name that Tobias played in back in ’91 with Jon Nödtveidt.

Unfortunately when most people discuss classic Swedish death metal this release rarely comes up, which is an honest mystery to me since it’s not only technically impressive it’s also down right catchy the whole way through. Also it’s never been re-released so actually finding an original copy could really prove to be both a challenge and expensive adventure. Personally I secured a copy of this album about eight years ago on eBay from some dumb bastard that sold it for a mere $8.

So, what happened to Decameron? Good question. Tobias went on to play for bands like Soulreaper, Seventh One and in 2005 as In Flames touring drummer. Jonny continued doing vocals and guitar in Grief of Emerald, while Johannes did Wolf and Seventh One as well, and most recently Alex emerged once again as the vocalist for a melodic death metal band named, Despite.

I have absolutely no idea what lead to the bands demise, but they left behind one of my honest true favorites from the classic Swedish melodic death metal scene.