Let’s kick off with a useless quiz fact: they’re named after a Venom song, not after the same-named Bruce Willis franchise.

We’re dealing with an old-school inspired outfit Die Hard. On most of their band promo pictures they look like bunch of black metal fetishists, but actually Die Hard play a raw and balls to the wall blend of death and thrash. They’re inspired by bands such as the above mentioned Venom, Sodom, Bathory and Celtic Frost, but classic – both in terms of their death and thrash metal elements – as the band may sound, they’ve only been around since 2005. Moreover, with their jagged and unsanded classic sound and hate and Satan-inspired lyrics, they really couldn’t have come from any other country than Sweden. Indeed, this is a clear-cut case of Swedeath!

After a bunch of shorter / smaller releases and a debut full-length called Breed Deadness Blood in 2008, Necrovation apparently finally developed an album worthy of their own name.

The band, from Kristianstad, Sweden, is active since 2003 and produces some very traditional sweaty armpits, beer and smoke Death Metal, a.k.a. Old-School! In a time in which Metal is heavily commercializing it’s a good thing some bands remain close to the roots of Extreme Metal. Necrovation (the album) offers a selection of nine songs of ear punishment in the traditional Death Metal way. Proper Swedeath!

So, to stay in the vein of this website, I thought of this title just to bring you some news I come across myself, rather than just copying what I read over at the likes of NCS or perhaps what I get through from PR-propaganda. I’ll write what I hear and what I think, and of course this is hugely influenced by our fans, so I’d say, hit us up on Facebook when you have something hot, which is worth mentioning. In this issue, our friend Patrick Urban who pointed out that Dämmerfarben had posted a preview of their upcoming effort Herbstpfad, while I personally picked up a new track from Loch Vostok.

Starting with the latter, I hope we all remember my review of Loch Vostok’s fourth effort Dystopium, which is quite old by now. Reading back, I can’t help but think I grossly misunderstood the album at that point. However, that’s history and now the band is back with a new album. As with Dystopium, it is ViciSolum Productions handling the release of V – The Doctrine Decoded, which is due this autumn. The lads were kind enough to share the song A Tale of Two Kings with us, and with this stream comes the unveiling of the album art, to be seen below.

It’s been primarily work that has kept me from regularly writing about Metal in the last months, but to be honest it’s also been a while since I’ve come across some Metal that could really pull my pisser properly. This week though, there were two bands that kicked me in the nuts and urinated on my gasping face. An awaking and refreshing experience!

One of those bands is Blood Mortized. They say they do Svensk Dödsmetal, but it sounds more like Swedish Death Metal to me. And of the honest type too! Raw, punishing and with the sensitivity of a corpse rising up from its grave. But at the same time with a shining clarity of production.

It’s a Swedish band operating in the Melodeath department since ages now – well, actually it’s since 1993. They are based in a place called Örnsköldsvik, which sounds so ‘Viking’ I just had to mention it. The band consists of six guys and have turned out a load of demos during the first ten years of their existence. After that followed two EPs and finally a full-length in 2010, titled Ode to Quietus.

Anyway, that’s not what I want to talk about today, as I’ve been informed Meadows End are working on something new. Recently they uploaded a lyrics video of a song that has not yet been released. The song’s named Masses Flee and it’s stated to be a first draft for the band’s upcoming album. Hence, we can say the song is still raw and unpolished. You would hardly notice though, as it already sounds brilliantly pro.

Only four songs and with a mastering that leaves a lot to be desired. But man am I digging this motherfucker!

Wall of the Eyeless are just two chaps, SL and Simon. The first is Russian, lives in Sweden, plays bass and all guitars and grunts around a bit. The latter is Swedish and bangs the bongos. They found each other only a few months ago and already came up with a first demo, downloadable for free (‘name your price’) on BandCamp. Worth your while!

That’s what bassist Otto of Sweden-based Metal outfit Scarred put in the subject line when he sent us the link to their stuff. Hm, strange, I suspect someone has been leaking about my prime interest in life. That being not the sexy part, not the Metal part and certainly not the Swedish part. Yes sir, it’s the bacon part, greasy strings of pig fat and dead meat. Otto must know this, but unfortunately his trick – which he pulled mid-December – to lure me in to check out their stuff resulted in a bacon binge eating session from which I’ve only just recovered. Close but no cigar!

With some delay though, I’ve just started playing some Scarred tunes and I like what I’m hearing. The band is sorely lacking professionalism in terms of recording and shit, but I like the concepts. The band pulls in influences from all over Metal and Rock and ends up spitting a flavor of Metal / Hard Rock that has groove as its prime ingredient. More importantly, their music sounds honest and I have no fuckin’ clue why. It’s just so obviously a bunch of guys in an old shed trying to have a bit of fun and maybe not realizing that they’re actually pretty good. I sincerely hope these guys will put together their life savings soon and spend it all on a proper recording session and professional mastering, if they haven’t already. That’s going to create hot shit!

Can’t sort you out with an embedded song this time, so instead pay the band a visit on Facebook for some tunes. Have fun!

If you’ve been with us for a long time, you may remember that last May we had an out-of-the-ordinary post in which we presented just one thing: an album cover. It was the cover for an album then-to-be-titled The Ethereal Throne, in production by a Swedish band we’ve been following around for a while like a small dog sniffing a big dog’s arse. The band’s formed by two dudes, Patrik Carlsson and Andreas Åkerlind and though the album in question, their fourth since they started out in 2003, was supposed to be released still in 2011, they did launch it until January of this year.

I do not mind, for the simple reason that I know Patrik a little from over the internetz and I know these guys are a bunch of perfectionists. I’ve noticed it from their previous material as well. So a delay of a few months is probably fully attributable to this and must have had a beneficial effect on the record’s quality. I mean, it shows: this album is pure quality in a thick volumeous sauce of awesome with pinches of hot shit and drops of delicious old-school punch in the teeth. I mean: it’s good!

Where my prejudice about Norwegian Metal makes me expect all Metal from Norway is Black Metal, I’ve got a similar – and equally fucked-up – rule of thumb about Sweden. It’s either Old-school Death Metal type of stuff or Melodeath that they produce there. Absolute rubbish of course and the examples are numerous. Still, it’s a bit of a default thing to expect I guess.

Today we add another entry to our list of examples that counter that coarse generalization: Humanity’s Last Breath. They’re a five-piece from the city of Helsingborg, where I know also Soilwork is from. A typical line-up of two guitars, a bass, some bongos and a voice, these guys produce something undeniably brutal and aggressive, often a shit storm of blasts and chugs, but also often melodic and harmonious. That is what I pulled from the band’s latest release, which was sent out into the world in early 2011 as their second EP since forming in 2009.

I actually need to write my letter of motivation, but this got me so pumped that I couldn’t get myself to do something else. I was wondering what people do at Doom Metal concert, do they like mosh in slow-motion, or do they headbang really slow and hard, or do they do ballet? So I typed in ‘doom live’ into Youtube, and the first one I got was a live video of Krux performing their song Omfalos. There were no crowd shots, but it certainly got me headbanging for 6 minutes, so I clicked through.

The most appealing songs came from their latest album III – He Who Sleeps Among the Stars, released end November, 2011. Their style is a mix of old school (think of Candlemass) and some modern tones. The old school feel is mainly enhanced by the use of clean vocals, although there are some rare growls to be spotted in their earlier work.