BLOODBATH - The Fathomless Mastery
December 5, 2008, 16 years ago
(Peaceville)
What began as a simple tribute to old school death metal values has now evolved way beyond the limitations of a frivolous side-project. Bloodbath may still espouse a hooks ‘n’ grooves philosophy steeped in the buzzsaw rage of Stockholm and the ornate menace of Tampa Bay, but the music on their third full-length album is anything but superficial nostalgia. This is utterly relevant and potent death metal with one scabbed foot planted firmly at each end of the genre’s lifespan to date, with a brutal and fiercely contemporary production job lifting these deceptively catchy and ruthlessly precise mini-epics into revelatory realms. Mike Akerfeldt takes centre stage, of course, and his oft-praised growls are quite without peer, but it’s the relentless barrage of ferocious and joyously incisive riffs that spew from the guitars of Anders Nystrom and Per ‘Sodomizer’ Eriksson that makes everything from savage opener ‘At The Behest Of Their Death’ and the mid-paced cudgelling of ‘Treasonous’ through to the barbaric multi-limbed attack of ‘Wretched Human Mirror’ resound with power, depth and electrifying intensity. In truth, a lot of crap is spoken about what does or does not constitute “real” death metal, but this cuts through it all like a swinging scythe. Whether you pine for the sloppy, malevolent past or embrace the gleaming ProTools present, Bloodbath are the living embodiment of everything that death metal is about.
