Martyrdöd
List

Suspended between Slayer, Bathory, and Discharge, Martyrdöd once again scream that the eighties will never die. This putrid echo responds to the name of “List,” a slobbering blasphemy that writhes epileptically between thrash revivals and early Scandinavian death, sinking into the leaden devotion to Nocturno Culto.

What surprises is the experience, the meticulous expertise in orchestrating their madness. It couldn't be any other way, after all. Martyrdöd are a supergroup: Kjellman also growls with the heroes Skitsystem, while more than one colleague has passed through Anti-Cimex. A perfectly calibrated frenzy, then. Crust barrages for DooM and Totalitӓr fetishists; discharges of “Scream Bloody Gore” and “Left Hand Path,” how beautiful. But suddenly everything sublimates into hypnotic and ethereal chants, melancholic and terrible carillons. Bolt Thrower meets “Suspiria” and Goblin.

Ideas we've heard before, but crafted with a maniacal passion for trӓdition. And so List, darker and more straightforward than its predecessor, convinces as a splendid soundtrack to Evil. Apocalyptic scenarios, aberrations, and lists of unshakable dogmas find their denunciation in Kjellman's feral howl: his Swedish roars, vomits, and hisses, becoming a universal lament, an extreme cry of hatred against rampant hypocrisy. The nightmare continues, but Martyrdöd are here to tell it. In the background, there are solos that pay tribute to Motörhead more than ever. Of course, under the d-beat aegis of the Masters of Stoke-on-Trent. What can we say, if not Hail Gothenburg?