DEMIURG

The thing about early 1990s Swedish death metal (and the output from the rest of Europe too, really) wasn't always speed, and it wasn't about who could be the most ludicrously brutal (although that was often a quite enjoyable by-product). No, there was a dankness to the stuff, a primal murk, an atmosphere even in the most punishing assaults. Before the groove and "death and roll" influences came to the fore, there was just this crushing, oppressive wall of downtuned guitars burbling through amps made of tar and swamp mud, savage and sardonic vocals delivered through shredded larynxes and echo chambers, and low end that throbbed like the deep roots of an infected tooth. GRAVE was arguably the best at this nihilistic, primitive rumble, while many suspects both acclaimed and obscure added their own take on this formative death metal sound.

Unfortunately, when people try to capture that feeling these days, things usually end up sounding too digital and clean, too self-conscious, or just too "fun" to really immerse oneself in the dirt-caked evil vibe of the classics. That makes it all the more awesome that Rogga Johansson (PAGANIZER, RIBSPREADER) has belched forth the DEMIURG project — this is a thrash-free, 'core-free, grind-free slab of rancid gray death metal that evokes the haunting and fetid early '90s death metal aura. This is the death metal of roiling black clouds over bleak featureless landscapes, of sodden and corpse-strewn battlefields in a thunderstorm at dusk. This is the stuff that makes us old-timers look at some of today's splatterheaded pig-squeal death metal and just laugh to ourselves.

Johansson knows his way around a riff, and he keeps them simple and evocative here, adding just the right amounts of tortured melody lines and even some black-metal style picking (see "Monolithany Part II", at about the one-minute mark). His playing is the star of the show — the mighty Dan Swanö guests on drums, and does a fine job, but he doesn't do anything showy (in fact, his drums actually sound kinda crappy, which may be a conscious throwback to the early days, or just a product of no budget). The vocals are just the right mixture of clarity and phlegm-and-blood-soaked catharsis, not too far removed from the early death bellows of Mikael Akerfeldt, actually. Johan Berglund guests on bass, and he deserves some of your time in headphones – he throws around all kinds of tasty subterranean bass licks under the surface of the blasted landscape, adding to the roiling, churning nature of the songs.

Highlights are all over the place — the funereal little repeating melody in "City of Ib", the straight-ahead gallop and chunky, catchy chorus of "Scorn Empire", the DISMEMBER-ian groove and primitive blackened blasts of "The Doom That Came To…". But really, it's an experience best suited for total immersion into the impassive void, from start to finish. Give in to that old-school murk, let its black waves of sound envelop you, and revel in that glorious molten-lead guitar tone and otherworldly doomed-out death atmosphere. DEMIURG join the ranks of BLOODBATH, MURDER SQUAD and the other not-so-inferior devotees of that creatively fertile, intensely brutal time in metal history — while they're not quite as stubbornly retro as many of their peers, it's that 1991 vibe that makes what they're doing so devastating.