Runemagick - Dark Dead Earth (2008)

Runemagick's history dates back to 1990 when the band was formed by Nicklas “Terror” Rudolfsson in Gothenburg, Sweden, originally under the name, Desiderius. Quickly changed to Runemagick, Nick released four demos between '91 - '92, but the band fell apart and he spent the next couple of years playing guitar and drumming for the bands Sacramentum & Deathwitch, when in '97 he resurrected Runemagick and released the bands debut, 'The Supreme Force of Eternity' in '98.

By '07 Runemagick had released no less than eleven full-length albums as well as a few splits and EPs along the way, which is quite prolific, yet these guys have always been underdogs among the heavyweights in the Swedish metal scene. Their most recent release since going on hold in '08 is this, 'Dark Dead Earth,' which gathers together the first three Runemagick albums, 'The Supreme Force of Eternity,' 'Enter the Realm of Death' and 'Resurrection in Blood' on two discs with also all of the lyrics in the booklet too.

The late 90's sort of brought about a resurrection of death metal around the world after its heavy decline in '93 and pretty much its death right afterwards. Going back to that first album in '98 its amazing to me that this band didn't dominate the scene upon its release since this is some absolutely crushing classic sounding death metal right here.

However Runemagick was never typically Swedish sounding, in fact this bands work reminds me more of Morgoth or Bolt Thrower, at times. There are lots of characteristics that make this band different because the music will often shift between blasting hair swirling head banging parts to mid-tempo atmospheric sections and even to slower death/doom territories, which is interesting since eventually this band took on a sound that was full on death/doom with later releases.

Regardless of speed or style, Runemagick is pretty much always heavy as fuck during their songs and catchy to boot. The faster songs have the right amount of liveliness, tightness and skill behind them to always keep things interesting, as well during those slower parts the atmosphere is high and often very melodious too, revealing a Dissection influence, which becomes very obvious by the time you get to their second album even though things are doomier by this point. Its just some of the leads and just the way the songs progress seem to scream Dissection to me and since two Dissection members had put time into this band I suppose their knowledge rubbed off on Niklas at some point.

Nicklas uses a hard driven death growl on these songs, but its not ultra guttural nor impossible to make out what he's saying and in fact it works quite well with the music. He also occasionally uses some spoken and whispered voices, as well going back to the atmospheric side of the music, keyboards do occasionally appear, which naturally enhances the mood all the more with their backing synthetic symphonies, which then sort of bring Pestilence or Nocturnus to mind.

Maybe my only complaint with this release is that, 'Enter the Realm of Death' ends up being split in two, between disc 1 & 2 and I think it would have been better to have just released each on a separate disc, but then I suppose the cost would have gone up too. Besides that all three of these albums are truly mighty and serve as a good introduction to this often overlooked Swedish band.

I haven't yet gone past these first three albums, but I definitely intend to hunt down most of this bands work, eventually. 'til then I'll keep blasting, 'Dark Dead Earth!'