Entombed
Inferno

THE REVIEW

How can I forget the first time I managed to stay awake in front of the TV past midnight without my mom nagging me as usual. It was to watch ''Sgrang!'' by Losco, a Tmc2 show dedicated to heavy metal in general, worshipped by the older kids in my town. For one reason or another, I hadn't been able to watch it in its nighttime version yet (there were reruns in the afternoon, but with the light and noises, it wasn't the same), and that night seemed to be the right one. I turned off the light. My teenage excitement was akin to that of the first, pimple-covered wet dream that would come in a couple of years. The disappointment was more or less the same.

The videos were the usual hair metal stuff at the end of its run, like Firehouse and Kingdom Come, mixed with the syrupy effusions of bands like Pearl Jam, Extreme, and Skid Row; then, there were the unavoidable Metallica with Enter Sandman, Punkreas, and that big-haired Glenn Danzig who had by then ventured into regrettable industrial paths with Blackacidevil. Well, when there were only 5 minutes left to one o’clock and my mind was imagining the best place to skip school the next morning, the last SGRAAAAANNNNG!!! that interrupted the various video clips came on: there was time for one last song, and the danger it might be Faith No More or Megadeth, whom I saw 20 times a day in heavy rotation, was as likely as, after turning off the TV, having a big wank to close the day more decently. Instead, something I had never seen before started. It was amateur stuff, to say the least, with confused images of a band inside a sleazy pub where people were brawling under a small stage. They were called Entombed, the track was ''Left Hand Path'', and the singer wasn't singing but vomiting incomprehensible words into the microphone. ''What the hell is this!?'' - I mumbled. It was death metal and it was love at first sight.

After that magnificent title track from that magnificent album (undoubtedly one of the most beautiful and influential in metal history), as their work progressed, the leitmotif of the Swedes didn’t change much; it simply evolved, which is inevitable for any form of art. ''Clandestine'', ''Hollowman'', ''Morning Star'', even the latest ''Ten Amendments''. For years, anyone who listened to the epic and poignant solos of Alex Hellid could say: ''yeah, Orcoboia! These guys are always Entombed! Maybe a little more atherosclerotic but they are still Entombed!''. Even in 2003. Even with ''Inferno'', their eighth collection of slaps in the face. But not those jaw-breaking, bread-and-Discharge-like slaps from their early days, which I still get with extreme, masochistic pleasure now. Slaps less visceral, more thought-out, equally lethal, like those (bewildering to many) of ''Wolverine Blues'' a decade earlier. Like those your mom gave you with yellow latex kitchen gloves when you messed up where she just cleaned.

Precisely, ''Inferno''. A title and cover completely predictable. Nihilistic melodies, purely rock attitude; piles of rage and death devastation, structures always and elaborated, far from banality. The furious march of ''Incinerator'', the monolithic refrain of ''That's When I Become a Satanist'' and the tradition of ''Young&Dead''. Hence, Inferno. The massive and sludgy doses of stoner and doom, with slowed tempos and leaden atmospheres, the opener/single ''Retaliation'' or the claustrophobic notes of the following ''Descent Into Inferno'' (and where else...) and ''Children of The Underworld'', even the sweet piano-instrumental intermissions of ''Intermission''. Some have called it death'n'roll.

That night, after that mystical vision, I definitively understood the importance of that rectangular thing called a VCR and how you could use it to great profit (looking back now it seems prehistoric, damn!). But above all, I discovered a band (and consequently a genre) that I still proudly carry in my little steel heart.

And then they say TV is useless for kids...