Grotesque
In the Embrace of Evil

THE REVIEW

In the history of music, there are fundamental bands that have composed dozens of records and have been active for several decades, but there are also bands that have released only a few demos and some EPs and have not been any less important in the development of their genre. Usually unknown to the general public but loved by enthusiasts, they become cult bands.

Grotesque have the honor of belonging to this category, whose name evokes a pioneering era at the end of the eighties when metal sought to go beyond the limits of thrash to evolve into something even more extreme. Thus, in 1988 in Gothenburg, Sweden, some young men decided to follow the path paved by Bathory and Celtic Frost, but also by Possessed, Death, and Morbid Angel from across the ocean and Sepultura and Sarcófago in the other hemisphere. Hiding their real names under blasphemous yet adolescent pseudonyms like Goatspell for Tomas Lindberg and Necrolord for Kristian Wåhlin, they began writing songs, playing in clubs and exchanging tapes with bands from Stockholm such as Morbid and Nihilist, giving life to what would become the Gothenburg scene.

Nevertheless, the band's history was short-lived, as after some demos and the EP "Incantation," for which The Haunting (Alf Svensson) also participated in the recording, after only two years, Goatspell and Necrolord decided to dissolve the band because, according to them, Grotesque had said everything they had to say and each wanted to embark on their personal artistic journey. In fact, Lindberg and Svensson teamed up with the Björler twins to form At The Gates, while Wåhlin created Liers In Wait and became a renowned graphic artist (he created the album covers for many Scandinavian bands such as Bathory, Dissection, Emperor, Amorphis, Dark Tranquillity, Dismember, Edge Of Sanity, Necrophobic, Tiamat, Morgana Lefay, At The Gates themselves and even "Elements" by Atheist).

The story of Grotesque resumed in 1997 when they decided to release a compilation titled "In the Embrace of Evil" containing the eponymous and unreleased demo and the EP "Incantation," plus two songs ("Church of the Pentagram" and "Ripped from the Cross") among the first composed by the band and recorded again for the occasion with some adjustments. The tracks are not presented in chronological order, with the demo tracks first and then those from the EP, but are mixed together, and it is possible to determine which recording they belong to because the 1990 tracks are a bit more complex and structured compared to the erratic shards of the beginnings; otherwise, the good remix and remastering work allows the tracklist to flow smoothly to the end. The music presented is primal extreme metal, at times more death, at times more black, which occasionally still lets thrash influences peek through, recorded when "True Norwegian Black Metal" did not yet exist and "Left Hand Path" had not been released, and the two subgenres were not yet developed and divided from each other. Nevertheless, the work remains fresh even today by virtue of the fact that it is not a victim of the clichés of the genres it helped create, and this clearly shows the difference between innovating bands and those that merely imitate what has already been done by others.

The final word on the band's affairs came, barring future surprises, ten years later with a commemorative concert for the release of the book "Swedish Death Metal" as a final farewell to their fans who had not forgotten them.