Entombed
Hollowman

THE REVIEW

There's no need to spend many introductory words on the Swedish band Entombed; their debut album released in 1990, "Left Hand Path," remains, even twenty-five years after its release, one of the best albums in the entire Death Metal genre. They have inspired with their brutal sound a myriad of bands, especially in Europe.

This is an EP released in 1993, which served as a deadly appetizer to that "Wolverine Blues," considered by many to be their peak. It's drummer Nicke Andersson, always the more "rock 'n' roll" soul of the band, who decisively takes the reins, going on to write five of the six tracks that make up the work; they decide to explore new paths, introducing in their sonic extremism slower, malign parts, yet no less ferocious from an auditory perspective. A new vile and blackened creature is born: Death 'n' Roll. It's quite easy to associate the cover image with this radical, dark, and ominous turn of the band.

Not by chance is the title track chosen to start the album; a track where Lars' infested voice becomes the immediate protagonist, with the two guitars of Alex and Ulf creating a cyclopean sonic wall, leaving no escape. The finale is a murderous slash: Nicke's double bass drum guides the subsequent apocalyptic sonic assault of all the other instruments that are sodomized, violated, producing something insurmountable. Four and a half minutes is the duration of one of the best songs ever composed by the band (try listening to it, watching your back).

The very brief "Serpent Speech" brings the sound back to a more canonical Death Metal, yet no less fierce, with an execution speed that is pure madness; an almost Hardcore approach, with that crushing impact of the guitars, always one of the group's characteristics. A track that ends with a burst of machine gun fire that sends shivers down my spine with each listen.

Side B of my vinyl opens with "Bonehouse," another lethal ride, with a central part that suddenly turns to a hallucinated mid-tempo; but the pause is of short duration because in the finale there's a new acceleration that is a gut punch of unmatched power. It's the six minutes of the cover of "Hellraiser," a song written by Christopher Young for the film of the same name, that concludes the work; a new overwhelming display of strength by Entombed. A dark and smoky nocturnal journey that takes you by the hand, a cold and dead hand, leading you towards the abyss, towards nothingness, towards the Underworld: chilling.

For me, a masterpiece, the best Death Metal EP ever released; not even Napalm Death and Carcass, with their short-format works, can compete with this mephistophelian discographic creation.

Ad Maiora.