Dissection - The Past Is Alive (The Early Mischief) (1997)

Released around the time Jon Nödtveidt began serving his sentence as an accomplice to murder, 'The Past Is Alive (The Early Mischief)' is a collection of Dissection's earliest songs. Although its not everything the band released prior to their debut, 'The Somberlain,' in fact the songs are not even assembled in the order they originally appeared on 'The Grief Prophecy' demo, 'Into Infinite Obscurity' EP and 'The Somberlain' demo. The 'Promo '93' is also completely absent and replaced with two songs from Jon's short lived band, Satanized.

The compilation kicks off with 'Shadows Over a Lost Kingdom' from the EP, and although the production is fairly raw, it can still be clearly seen that in late '91 when it was released that these four young lads from Strömstad, Sweden were onto something completely different. At a time when everyone in Sweden was following Entombed and Dismember, Dissection were already forging ahead with their more melodic tinged death metal. This is additionally notable due to the band members ages. Jon had just turned sixteen the previous month, while the other members were only between the ages of 17-18.

Dissection in '91

Continuing we come to 'Frozen,' taken from 'The Somberlain' demo from March of '92. Musically its fairly close to the album version, though the production is similarly raw and in a strange sort of way I 'almost' prefer it to the final version. Maybe it just has something to do with the underground tones or due to my own unmeasurable love for the bands first album, but I've always enjoyed hearing bands I admire in their embryonic stages.

The next five songs are all taken from these two recordings with 'Son of the Mourning' from the EP really standing out as the compilations best song, though by the time we reach 'The Call of the Mist' & 'Severed into Shreds' we see Dissection as they were at the beginning of '91. On 'The Grief Prophecy' demo the band offers up fairly straight forward Swedish death metal not entirely different from the bands mentioned above and even with typically growled vocals. The production is far more primal in style and is quite similar to all other demos of the era, but its certainly very listenable. Again even in these early days the musicianship and song writing is quite admirable and I can only imagine it was inspiring for anyone that heard these upon their original release. Curiously though the third song from the demo, 'Consumed' is missing and a quick hop over to youtube revealed it to be, honestly, probably the best out of the three tracks on the demo.

The final two songs are from the aforementioned Satanized, who had a few rehearsal tapes and one gig in November of '91. The production is loud and about as typically rehearsal like as you could get. Despite that its fast paced melodic death metal not sounding too different from Dissection's EP, which probably also explains why the band was quickly aborted. The band also had something of a future all-star line-up, with Thomas Backelin, Tobias Kellgren, Johan Norman and Per Alexandersson alongside Jon.

I hardly see 'The Past Is Alive (The Early Mischief)' as an essential release, but for the Nödtveidt and Dissection fans in general its an interesting look back at a couple of kids who innocently changed the future of black/death metal forever.