Grave
You'll Never See...

"Discovering Forgotten Death Metal" part six: we're staying in Scandinavia and talking a bit about those three/four (depending on their career phase) guys who are Grave. The name already says it all about these three/four Swedes; simple, concise, Death metal.

They started as a trio as early as 1986 under the name Corpse, then, a year later, became Grave and debuted with the Demo "Black Dawn"; however, you have to wait until 1991, the year they signed with none other than Century Media and released the milestone "Into The Grave". "You'll Never See" was released the following year, in a completely changed musical context; in nearby Norway, the Black phenomenon was about to explode, and people were already starting to talk about Burzum, Mayhem, Immortal, and Darkthrone. In England, Napalm Death, Carcass, and Benediction monopolized the Death scene, while Paradise Lost opened new paths. In the Netherlands, they listened to Pestilence and Asphyx, and soon Sinister would make their appearance: in Germany, meanwhile, Sodom, Destruction, and Kreator reigned undisturbed.

In America, meanwhile, big things were happening: Death was starting to experiment, Obituary was not experimenting, Deicide was hitting it big with "Legion," Morbid Angel with "Blessed Are The Sick," and the following year also with "Covenant," and Cannibal Corpse and Suffocation were competing to see who was the heaviest (a Freudian reimagining of the birth of Brutal Death Metal). And then there were Immolation, Malevolent Creation, Autopsy, Gorguts, and many more: and in Sweden? In Sweden, all the Death bands were dying: Carnage was a memory, Entombed was navigating toward Death Rock, Dismember was winking at Black, and someone was already talking about Melodic Death (does the name Unanimated ring any bells?). In short, Grave found themselves alone defending the banner of hard and pure Death Metal in a land that was losing interest in this musical genre; so what did Grave do in response? They released a solid piece of badass Death that would make "Left Hand Path" pale in comparison. No "chainsaw" guitars (as Entombed's distortion is famously defined) and a strong desire to shout "Death Metal" make this album a true classic.

Grave shows they have greatly improved technically from the previous LP, although the Thrash influences and the general European conception of Death metal prevent them from doing anything spectacular: a canonical performance of Old School Death, meaning an album played well and with precision but not exceeding in difficulty beyond the fastest Thrash. On the other hand, in a historical musical moment when Death was a novelty, you couldn’t expect them to try to innovate the novelty with virtuosity; U.S. bands like Deeds Of Flesh, Cryptopsy, Gorguts, and Dying Fetus would do this one or two years later when the need for even greater extremism would start to be felt.

Grave are fine for now and, in a sense, are also complacent not to change a jot. Powerful riffing accompanied by textbook drumming makes this album a colossus, a damn bulldozer. In this album too, there is a preference for sorts of Mid Tempo or rather songs where slowdowns are frequent and important, not just devices to vary a bit. As in all primordial Death works, Blast Beat is avoided because it is considered a prerogative of Grindcore, a subgenre too mongrelized with Hardcore Punk for pure Death Metallers. The riffing, as I was saying, is still tied to Thrash stylistics but undoubtedly thicker, just like the drumming, which may be a little boring (except for some very pleasant counter-time, otherwise it's something already heard). However, the eight songs are beautiful, all well composed; there is no doubt that Grave, compared to other colleagues like Cadaver, writes much better songs (as demonstrated by the duration of the individual songs, always exceeding four minutes). Finally, how could one not mention the singer, also a guitarist, equipped with a growl worthy of the name, although not very cavernous.

But in short, this review cycle does not aim to pick apart this or that band for how they sound, the purpose is merely to bring back to light some forgotten names, even though Grave are still trying today; in fact, the band has never disbanded and continues to release albums (the last one is just three years old), but has done little or nothing to keep up with the times, continuing to propose anachronistically a raw and too Old School Death Metal (anyway with much better results than Cancer and Cadaver). However, this does not detract from their first two works, real milestones of the genre and clear examples of Death Metal.