I have realized something, technical death metal can definitely kick serious a**. But I realized something else, Sweden has indeed lots of death metal bands and other extreme bands but Sweden does not have many technical death bands. I found a few bands and I looked up first a band called
Theory In Practice, an amazing tech death band. Although they were playing technical death metal so I looked for a technical and
brutal death metal band. And then I found
Spawn Of Possession, a band that was labelled as a technical and brutal death band. The band was created in Sweden around 1997 and they are an active band with two full-length albums in their baggage. So how does this band sound like? They play in the same spirit as bands like
Visceral Bleeding and
Necrophagist, their music is of course technical, heavy and with the guttural vocals they are most of all brutal.
Cabinet was their first album which was released in 2003, three years later they churned out
Noctambulant. To spice up the information I will add that there are three vocal guest appearances in this album. In the track called
By A Thousand Deaths Fulfilled we can hear
Robbe K from
Disavowed and
Arsebreed. In
Death & Grotesque we have
Dusty from
Severed Savior and then we have
Pat O’Brien from
Cannibal Corpse in [u]Render My Prey[/i].
Noctambulant is pretty much a dark, unpleasant and brutal album filled with twisted and complex guitars, blast-beats and mid-paced drumming and deep guttural animal growling. Even if this is mostly a brutal and heavy hitting death album you will notice that a few melodic moments are performed. These melodic tunes does not interfere with the song structures, the only purpose the melodies have is to create a haunting atmosphere.
Inception,
Sour Flow,
Sorched and
In My Own Creed are the only songs that I can locate melodic tunes. The rest of the record is basically mutilating madness.
Spawn Of Possession has a crew of five people which means one vocalist, two guitars, one bass and one drummer which also is a vocalist. We begin with the vocals shall we, as a brutal band a brutal voice is highly necessary if you ask me. Deep and guttural beast growls create a perfect atmosphere of unpleasant and evil. Unfortunately there is a lack of vocal variety here, even if there are guest vocalists in this record does not help the album material. If we had a few screams, harsher vocals or perhaps some sudden blackish shrieks a little now and then would’ve been better. I know when I hear something technical and I have to say that I’m not impressed by these two guitarists. Technique is used well here but I think that this type of guitar performance is more complex and strange rather then technical. Most riffs have a short structure, the flow in general is bad I my opinion, riffs are played and later being stopped and new other riffs is played, this makes the whole thing so confusing. I would rather say that the guitar solos are way better than the rhythms and leads. Fast, high-pitched and chaotic solos put a good texture to the songs. Inaudible bass, what more can I say. Overwhelmed by the guitars the bass has few moments alone, it still provides with a great backup sound but you can only hear the bass when higher notes are played or when the guitars plays a different riff line when the bass plays another. Ever heard of blast-beats and mid-paced drumming? Then if you happen to like fast and intense drumming than this album might be something for you. Here you have your typical raging death drumming performance, blast-beats, mid-paced, double bass kicking plus other different patterns that create a decent drum variety.
I don’t know what to say about this album, I’m definitely not impressed and therefore disappointed instead. I prepared for the worst but when I eventually listened to this it was not so bad after all. I really liked the deep beast growls and the backup singers but that was everything I enjoyed. I know when I hear a good technical metal band and
Spawn Of Possession was not good enough for me. Compare this band with
Theory In Practice in terms of technicality this band is been ***kicked by
Theory In Practice hands down. It feels like this band has been focusing more on atmosphere instead of working hard on music creativity. I think that this felt like
Immolation but a few steps faster and meaner, it felt just like another death metal band except with a bit more complex guitar performance. The things that
Spawn Of Possession did great was to sound brutal but I don’t know about technical though. I could still recommend this album to people who like fast and brutal death like
Bloodbath,
Visceral Bleeding,
Immolation and perhaps early
Hypocrisy. If you expect this to be highly technical death music then you’re wrong, this sounds like your ordinary brutal death manglers out there. Serious death metal and old-school people would enjoy this album better than those who are more into melodic and newer sorts of death metal.
Positives
+ They sure are brutal
+ Complex guitar performance
+ Awesome album cover
+ The backup growls from the guest vocalists creates a bit more vocal variety
Negatives
- The songs has a bad musical flow
- Will get repetitive with time
- More vocal variety from Jonas Renvaktar (vocalist) would've been great
- Every song follows nearly the same song patterns
Recommended Tracks
-- Dead & Grotesque
-- By A Thousand Deaths Fulfilled
The album fulfilled the task of being brutal but technical? Not as technical as I hoped for, this will be given a 2.5/5
