Swedish Death Metal (2009)

Swedish Death Metal is a massive three CD set of classic Swedish Death Metal music from the late 80's through 1993. The author of the Swedish Death Metal book, Daniel Ekeroth had originally toyed with the idea of including a CD with his book, but eventually abandoned it when he realized it would have been one ridiculously huge amount of work. Therefore, a couple years after the books release we see a German label named, Index Verlag who is also responsible for incredibly awesome compilations like, 'Looking For Europe - Neofolk Compendium' & 'Lords Of Chaos: The History Of Occult Music' releasing this compilation.

This release comes as a luxurious fold out digipak, which includes several old photos of the bands that are included as well as a booklet that has comments from Daniel on each and every track included.

The first CD consists of very old songs from the 80's and all of the material here is from various bands demo tapes. It's a rare opportunity to get to hear demo songs from long forgotten and quite incredible bands like Mefisto, Carbonized, Explusion, Tribulation and Sorcery (as well as a few others). You also get to hear Entombed before they were Entombed when they were running under the Nihilist moniker, or there's also Corpse, which eventually transformed into Grave after their 1986 demo tape. It's also quite interesting hearing Therion here since it was pure Swedish Death Metal in these days without a trace of opera or anything symphonic at all. I was also quite amazed with the songs from Desultory, Grotesque and Affliced Convulsion (later known as just Afflicted).

Jumping to the second CD we get to hear some of the most legendary names in the Swedish Death Metal scene and here we get treated to various songs from these bands debut or sophomore albums. Here we get all the heavy weights; Entombed, Nirvana 2002, Dismember, Grave, Unleashed, Tiamat, At the Gates, Edge of Sanity, Marduk and Dissection as well as lesser known bands like General Surgery, Carbonized, Liers in Wait, Cemetery and Afflicted. There's another track from Therion and a song from Tiamat's debut release, and goddamn its just strange hearing stuff like this considering where those two are at twenty years later.

The third CD seems to consist of lesser known bands from the scene, but nevertheless bands that did release full length albums or demos in the early 90's. I don't know what to say other than bands like Evocation, House of Usher, Crypt of Kerberos, Interment and especially Traumatic absolutely fucking rule. Other bands like Seance, Macrodex, Eternal Darkness, Uncanny and Necrony are no less killer either, but I must admit the songs from Furbowl (early band for Johan Liiva of Arch Enemy) and S.G.R. (all female death metal band) leave a bit to be desired. There's also two songs from newer bands named Repugnant and Katalysator, which have thee old Swedish sound down perfectly.

All in all I find very little fault with this compilation and I'm quite sure once you listen to these CDs it will instantly spawn an interest in these old bands. It certainly did for me. The only downside is a lot of these full-lengths and demos have never been re-released (and probably wont be) so for the true fans that demand physical copies you'll more than likely pay a lot for them on eBay. Unfortunately I don't have the money for all that these days so maybe later I'll hunt down some mp3's since I'm quite sure they are out there on some blog, somewhere.

I have however sat in this chair entirely too long. It's time to get up, let the hair down, put back a few beers and headbang like a mother fucker to some classic Swedish Death Metal music!

Svensk DödsMetal för evigt!