Review Summary: On a left hand path/Global fucking bloodbath
Of all the supergroups in the Swedish extreme metal scene, there aren’t too many quite like Bloodbath. The band started off as a culmination of members from progressive death metal acts that wanted to hearken back to the days of Morbid Angel and Suffocation, but could never maintain a stable lineup. Sure, they managed to keep together most of the instrumentalists, but they just couldn’t settle on a vocalist. There was the constant flip-flopping between Mikael Akerfeldt of Opeth and Peter Tagtgren of Hypocrisy, and it eventually became so tedious that the band went on hiatus in 2012. Finally, in 2014, Bloodbath have revealed their new frontman as Nick Holmes of Paradise Lost, and have released a new album entitled
Grand Morbid Funeral. With their first LP in six years, Bloodbath aim to live up to the expectations set over their hiatus, and manage to come out successful for the most part.
The first thing you’ll notice about
Grand Morbid Funeral is the production style. Following up on the more concise production from
The Fathomless Mastery, the mix on the album is both raw and clear. It greatly resembles the style seen on classic Swedish death metal albums such as Entombed’s
Left Hand Path, with the heavily distorted guitar riffs and bass becoming so entwined that they resemble the buzzing of chainsaws. At the same time, though, the sound of the lead guitar and drums ring out very distinctly, leaving no room for ambient background noise or other lower production values. While we’re on the topic of the instrumental side, it’s worth noting that almost all of the instrumentalists on the album (minus guitarist Per Eriksson) have been in the band now for at least ten years, with bassist Jonas Renkse and lead guitarist Anders Nystrom being the two founding members left in the band. This shines through in the music, as everyone seems to be focused and dependent on one another as a group. Martin Axenrot’s drums provide a steady support for the aforementioned buzzsaw-like riffs of Renkse and Eriksson, while Nystrom throws in a nifty guitar solo every now and then to prevent the constant boom of the rhythm from descending into complete monotony. It’s a supergroup in every sense of the word.
However, there are two glaring problems with
Grand Morbid Funeral. Firstly, vocalist Nick Holmes is, sadly, the weakest link on the album. His growls are by no means unbearable, but they don’t have any unique qualities to them. Mikael’s deep, bellowing roars and Peter’s tenacious snarling were both easily recognizable and stood out amongst other death metal vocalists. Nick hasn’t really done harsh vocals in Paradise Lost for a while now, and it shows. However, the biggest detractor is the fact that as dynamic as Bloodbath is, there’s no particular standout tracks on
Grand Morbid Funeral. Sure, the album flows together very well, but at the end of the day, you won’t be able to remember most of the song titles or even be able to tell the tracks apart from one another. At least their previous work had some memorable tracks like “Eaten” and “Hades Rising”. Here, it feels like the entire album is just one really long death metal song.
But even in spite of all that,
Grand Morbid Funeral does end up getting the job done. You see, even though there’s nothing on here that you haven’t already heard before, Bloodbath does it all so well that you can’t help but get a little lost in it. Truth be told, at this point in time, it’d be a fool’s gambit to expect anything too surprising or refreshing from the band. Yet,
Grand Morbid Funeral works just fine for what it is: a nostalgia trip into the caverns of old school death metal. And if you’re willing to bust out that ol’ Dismember t-shirt and bottle of Jack Daniel’s you haven’t touched since ’93, then
Grand Morbid Funeral is sure to be one hell of headbanger.
