Death Breath - Stinking Up The Night

Published Oct. 20 2006

*=Staff's pick	Death Breath Chopping Spree* Heading For Decapitation Dragged Through The Mud Coffins Of The Unembalmed Dead* A Morbid Mindsss Reduced To Ashes* Christ All Fucking Mighty Flabby Little Things From Beyond Cthulhu Fhtagn!

Genre	Death Metal	Robert Pehrsson	Vocals
Tracks	10	Nicke Andersson	Guitar
Runningtime	40 Min.	Robert Pehrsson	Guitar
Label	Black Lodge	Mange Hedquist	Bass
Release	29 Sept. 2006	Nicke Andersson	Drums
Country	Sweden	-	Keyboards
Similar artists	---

Nicke Andersson, founding member and main man behind death metal legends Entombed, has after quite some years in the outskirts of the rock'n'roll scene got the taste for old school death metal back and has returned to show us how it's supposed to be done. And as the death metal nestor he is, he does it good and according to the standard template of how it should sound. In fact this is so old school that the promo was sent out on cassette (!) instead of on a cd which is standard nowadays. Now, how vintage is not that?

The idea behind Death Breath is to tie the knots together with the old school death metal, the classic sound of the past. We are talking mid 80's and early 90's. And it is almost spooky how well they succeed with that task. This album could have been picked right out that era and fooled me any day of the week. Everything from the production, the riffs, the songstructures to the vocals are perfect relics of the past and are executed in a perfect way. The album is dynamic and well balanced, and that is due to a good balance between plenty of old school, classic shaped riffs and more thrash'n'roll-parts. The latter is what mostly catch my attention and serve as a good spice to the overall sound picture.

However, considering the hype that was proceeding the album I get a feeling not so much of disappointment, because the album is good, but more of "was this it....?". We get a good slab of adequate death metal but it does not leave much lasting impressions. I think that for example Bloodbath does modern old school death metal better and also more exciting with a bit more dimension to it. This does not beat Entombed's earlier work either but that was really an utopia that it should. I don't think you can take this music any further anymore because of the narrow framework you have to work in.

This is almost as good as it gets nowadays within the realm of old school death metal. It is easier in more melodic metal because there you have much more tools to work with in order to create nuances - melodies, atmospheres, moods, etc. Here you can pretty much just go for it and it does not allow much space for taking out any turns.

As guests on the album we find prominent people such as Scott Carlson (Repulsion), Jörgen Sandström (Grave, Entombed, Vicious Art etc.) and Fred Estby (Dismember).

Production	Vocals	Compositions
7	6,5	6

Summary
6 chalices of 10 - Tommy