Laethora - March Of The Parasite

Published March 23 2007

*=Staff's pick	Parasite* Clothing For The Dead Revolution At Hand Impostors Black Void Remembrance* Repulsive* The Scum Of Us All Y.M.B. Warbitrary* Facing Earth

Genre	Death Metal	Jonatan Nordenstam	Vocals
Tracks	10	Joakim Rosén	Guitar
Runningtime	39 Min.	Niklas Sundin	Guitar
Label	Osmose Productions	Jonnie Täll	Bass
Release	26 Feb. 2007	Joel Lindell	Drums
Country	Sweden	-	Keyboard
Similar artists	Grave

A death metal super-force, is that a good description of Laethora? With the new Dark Tranquillity album in sight, guitarist Niklas Sundin along with members from the Provenance unleash a brutal attack. Do not expect resemblances with their regular bands in the sound of Laethora, this is purely a display of power in old-school brutal death metal. Grave, Dismember and other Stockholm based bands gives you a way better point in which direction this is heading and in addition, Morbid Angel can provide you with further travel directions.

They are hammering and grinding out the songs and the opening Parasite sets the brutal tone, and they keep it that way. It is brutal, primitive and raw yet it is somehow innovative and Laethora never become monotonous in any way. Imposters is a song that switches from slower parts to typical fast and aggressive high-calibre death metal and has some really nice parts where the riffing creates a headbanger friendly groove. Laethora grind and bash their way forward and in some of the songs they offer some more varied material as with the slow closer Facing Earth and for instance Black Void Remembrance is a track with more nuances containing vocals that are partly sung with a clean voice. As the other members hail from Dark Tranquillity and The Provenance, the whereabouts of vocalist Jonatan Nordenstam is to me unknown, but he sounds like he is spawn from hell with dark and thick growls, mixed with screams of torment. Just listen to the song Y.M.B. where he demonstrates his capabilities. For this kind of raw death metal he suits perfectly and he has a great deal of authority in his voice.

The rhythm section surely gives the pulse to Laethora but it is the blistering guitars and the aggressive grinding from Niklas Sundin and Joakim Rosén that give the extra needed touch to the album. I would not go as far as using the word melodic in how I describe Laethora, but the guitar-attacks make small breaks in the aggression with the furious leads and competent playing. However, at times it could also be the guitars that are feeding the aggression, like in Repulsive that has parts that kick some serious death metal ass with an apparent closeness to grind-core. March Of The Parasite by Laethora is nothing that will go down in the history books, but nevertheless it is an album I will surely play some more, especially when I have the urge for something aggressive, primal and fast. Then it will be a good complement to my Grave albums.

Performance	Originality	Production	Vocals	Songwriting
8	3	6	6	6

Summary
6 chalices of 10 - Thomas