BLOODBATH - Grand Morbid Funeral

November 21, 2014, 9 years ago

(Peaceville)

David Perri

Rating: 9.0

review black death bloodbath

BLOODBATH - Grand Morbid Funeral

Establishing your raison d’etre on perfection’s template isn’t exactly the easiest route to carve for yourself, but Bloodbath has always made the task seem uncomplicated and effortless. Since 2002’s inextricably untouchable Resurrection Through Carnage, Bloodbath has acted as homage to, and next generation revival of, the Stockholm Death/Sunlight Studios sound, one encapsulated most strongly, and most viscerally, by the iconography that is Entombed’s Left Hand Path (1990), Dismember’s Like An Ever Flowing Stream (1991) and Grave’s Into The Grave (1991), even if the sound was created by late Nihilist guitarist Leif Cuzner and crafted by producer Tomas Skogsberg. Since then, legions have taken Sunlight Studios’ reckoning as their mouths for war, but those vital remains are rarely taken up with the respect and authenticity that is implicit, and complicit, in the Bloodbath camp.


Part of that has to do with the Bloodbath lineage, of course. The original lineup was made up of Opeth’s Mikael Akerfeldt, Katatonia’s Anders “Blakkheim” Nystrom and Jonas Renkse, as well as the metal omnipresence that is Dan Swano. It’s a collective of people that have earned, and re-earned, our respect over the years and that quadraphonic is as close to any sort of Swedish death metal epitome as there will ever be (all that’s missing, really, is a dude or two from Gothenburg). Bloodbath’s debut EP, Breeding Death, and the aforementioned Resurrection Through Carnage served notice that the Sunlight Studios sound had not died any sort of ignoble, fading-away death. It was still - in the 21st century - carnage (and Carnage) encapsulated.


And then the left hand path continued: Bloodbath peers Peter Tatgren and Martin Axenrot eventually joined the proceedings for 2004’s Nightmares Made Flesh while 2008 brought a different venture through the Morbid Angel worship that was The Fathomless Mastery, both of which were successes on their own terms and entirely in line with Bloodbath’s respected and revered past. But it’s in 2014 that Bloodbath’s legacy has been given another chapter of infamy and disorder.


Though the story within the story is that Grand Morbid Funeral features the inclusion of Paradise Lost vocalist Nick Holmes, it’s Grand Morbid Funeral’s return to Bloodbath’s roots (bloody roots) and existential breeding ground that is to be celebrated, profoundly. To your first question, then: yes, Holmes does a sacrilegious job here, the Englishman internalizing Bloodbath’s mandate, mission, and multitudes and producing results that tangibly display that process. Musically, Grand Morbid Funeral is Sunlight Studios with twenty years of hindsight, life experience and muscle building, this record amongst the most forceful 2014 has seen. Given Bloodbath’s lineup and history, it should come as no surprise that Grand Morbid Funeral is this good, but it does. Even with expectations elevated and death metal lifers consistently alert for a new entry into Stockholm Death’s ethos, Grand Morbid Funeral has surpassed and executes with the type of intrigue and life force death metal has always encapsulated.


“It’s not like you get pats on the back for listening to death metal,” ex-Entombed drummer Nicke Andersson told me in Stockholm during the spring of 2008. He was right - you don’t.  But the authenticity and digging-in-the-dirt gravitas by which Bloodbath transmits its message is the reward. Know this.



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