In tandem with the German version of Daniel Ekeroth’s book Swedish Death Metal Index Verlag has put out a three CD compilation featuring demo tracks from known Swedish death metal bands like Entombed and Dismember as well some lesser known bands like Liers In Wait, Nirvana 2002, Carbonized, and Afflicted. For me this compilation is a blast from the past as I was a big fan of Swedish death metal back in its heydays from around 1990 to 93. I wasn’t aware of death metal back in the demo days around 1988-89, but in 1990 I saw the “Left Hand Path” video by a young Swedish band named Entombed and from thereon I was sold. Entombed was the first to crack the surface and soon a myriad of bands followed, some more original than others.
A common thing however was the fat and dirty Sunlight Studio production. Tomas Skogsberg was the Swedish pendant to Scott Burns. The beefy Sunlight Studio sound that everyone seemed to want back then also made a lot of the bands sound alike. This is quite noticeable on many of the songs featured. Another thing that makes many of the bands sound similar is that they feature some of the same people. It’s fascinating to see how people like for instance Matti Kärki, L-G Petrov, Tomas Lindberg or Christofer Johnsson have been involved in lots of the different bands featured. It’s known that the early death metal sound has strong references to thrash metal and that definitely can be heard in many of the songs.
Most of the songs on the compilation are demo material and that is also what makes Swedish Death Metal a little more interesting than the common sampler. It’s fun to hear how the early formations of Entombed, Grave and Dismember sounded back in the day. Also it’s interesting hear how bands like Therion, Cemetary, and Tiamat that later on has mellowed out sounded back then. Moreover there are some germs like Toxaemia, Crypt Of Kerberos, House Of Usher, Uncanny, Sarcasm and Interment that I didn’t knew of prior to the compilation. There’s a lot to find here for the interested death metal fan.
Personally I miss a few bands, and I also find a few of the choices a bit misplaced, but then again with the amount of bands that arose in the early days it must have been a bitch to pick what to include and what not to include. However it would have been a good idea only to feature one song per band in order to make room for more bands.
