Review Summary: Nothing new for the time, just crushing Swedish death metal with some US metal influence.
Generally when digging into the old school death metal surface one generally encounters bands like Cryptopsy, Entombed, Gorguts, Immolation and Suffocation early, before finding less well known bands. However, some bands are unknown to a great deal of old school death metal followers, despite crushing and skilled performances on album. Seance definitely fits in this group, and on their first album they deliver a mix of the crushing power of Dismember and other fellow Swedish bands with the speed of American bands such as Malevolent Creation.
It's fairly easy to say that the musicianship displayed on this album is fairly standard of the death metal crowd, which generally means very strong indeed. The Haunted main man Patrik Jensen plays brutally powerful riffs with co-guitarist Tony Kampner, with both speed and brutal slow sections being featured in their playing. Vocalist Johan Larsson provides fairly standard vocals and a nice and audible bass to the mix, while drummer Micke plays fast double bass and some interesting time signatures at times, but always with precision and power.
The album immediately throws a quick punch with
Who Will Not Be Dead, showing the great speed and prowess as it storms through several powerful and catchy riffs with Larsson providing some of his more guttural vocals before the song slows down into a technical set of riffs. Similar power is provided by tracks like
The Blessing of Death and
Haunter, both of which capable of satisfying the Swedish death metal listener and the American death metal equivalent (though especially the latter as the tracks certainly feature greater speed than the average Swedish type song).
Reincarnage is closer to a Swedish death metal style song at times and also provides technical goods on top of that, and
Necronomicon provides plenty of crushing and slow riffs with the occasional interesting vocal effect. Pretty much every track here is very good, even the close to filler
Winds Of Gehenna, which is entirely instrumental but still an entertaining track.
If there's any problem with this album it's how overly consistent it is. There isn't THAT much variation in song structure and while it's technical and powerful and the suchlike there's a good chance of it repelling the inexperienced death metal listener. However, for the experienced listener of the genre this should be a fulfilling experience.
Recommended Tracks:
Reincarnage
The Blessing Of Death
Haunter
Necronomicon
(Seriously, any of the tracks on this album are a decent start to it)
