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.

Hell, we’re up to date. Yesterday “Melodic Death Metal”-outfit Miseration put out a video for their song Dreamdecipher. Yeah, the Melodic Death Metal is in quotation marks because our holy bible (aka the Metal Encyclopedia) says that, but I can tell you, this is not Melodic Death Metal. Sounds more like Technical Grindcore to me.

Who are Miseration? You ask. Miseration are a Swedish band formed in 2006, and have since produced two full-lengths, on which they play a very heavy, Grindcore-influenced kind of Melodeath. Stylistically they are a very interesting band, and I haven’t really heard something like what they did on their first two albums before. Dreamdecipher however takes their sound to a less original height, although it’s still a good song of course.

Metal out of Sweden today, by a four-piece named Asylium. An Architecture of Human Desolation is their first full-length accomplishment and it was released into the world in June of this year. I’ve been on it for a couple of days now and I can tell you it’s loud. Grinding. Heavy. Hard. Raw. Crude. And not for fuckin’ pussies.

An Architecture of Human Desolation is a bit like Grindcore for people with extra big balls. It has the same integral crudeness and hardness, just played at extra brutal amp settings and with an overload of sharp hooks and leads. A concept that should be familiar. But does it really work?

When November had just turned to December, we wrote a short piece about a Swedish fun-Thrash outfit called Six in Line. The band at the same time plays some old-school sounding Thrash Metal and don’t take themselves too seriously. Music with a dose of humor can never go wrong and it’s why I liked their shit so much.

Well, the guys have recently uploaded two new songs to a secret location on the internets and I was invited to check ‘em out. And so I did. ‘Cause I’m Dutch and free stuff makes my dick hard.

[In early November we published an article written by contributor Havik Incarnate. It was about an unsigned Swedish band called Mudpusher, a band that has been rocking his boat for a while now. Today Havik returns with a full-blown interview with the band. This is going to be a hell of a long read, but it’s definitely worth your time! You might want to play the music at the end of the article while you read though.]

Mudpusher is as Metal as Metal can get. It’s been 3 years since its inception, and the 3/4^th Swedish machine has kept turning. In a clichéd and decaying Metal scene, few bands have provided the sledgehammer impact that this band has, making them a breath of fresh air. They have successfully continued to draw a distinct line between evolution and straight up rip-off, in terms of sound. After all, who else can match the sacred element of groove?

The plethora of ‘screamo’ bands these days? Please, their priorities are about what side they should don a fringe on every morning. The cavalry of mindless ‘Black Metal’ warriors? That sub-genre is a perpetual popularity contest to see who’s more evil, and nothing else. Mudpusher emanate more conviction on a plain ol’ bad day, than all those bands do when all combined on their best.

I recently had the pleasure to sit down with the band to talk about what exactly fuels their drive.

First thing I thought about when I saw this band name is my car. It’s a BMW 3 series from 1998 – that’s the actual one in the pic – and it’s got a 2.8 six-in-line engine. I fuckin’ love it. Takes me from A to Dead-Against-a-Tree in about 7 seconds.

Turns out the band isn’t named after an engine, despite that this would definitely fit its dirty Thrashy style of music. As Adrian, guitarist in the Swedish quintet, explained it to me, he “actually came up with the name thinking of the number of the beast; 666. But nowadays we say that it’s after a type of guitar headstock where the tuners are six in line with each other.” And fuck me, that might just be equally exciting!

Anyfuck, the band’s from Hellsingborg – not Helsingborg – and that’s where they produce Thrash in a comic old-school type of vein. Their interests include ”fast riffs, fast solos, fast vocals, fast drums and big tits”, which if you consider it 100% objectively is really all you need in life. So, these chaps are righteous and they know what counts in life. Therefore we would most-fuckin’-definitely like to introduce you to their shit!

By the way, if that band pic of theirs looks slightly disturbing to you, just be thankful I didn’t opt for another one, involving the root of a dick and lots of chest hair!

”When the United States Army Air Forces dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan at 8:15 A.M. on August 6, 1945, near the end of World War II, a miracle happened. From the ashes of the nuclear smoke and waste, from the burnt victims screaming for aid, there they were: Nuclear Torment. A three-man army, ready to defeat all! They were found by the US military one year later, crawling around in the crater of the bombing, still babies. They had nothing to eat but human, radioactive flesh from the victims of the bombing, and they had nothing to drink but the blood of the bodies that had been laid to waste.”

Well there’s no shortage of imagination in the joint psyche of Jakob “Mr Nuclear Torment” Nuk’em (vocals, nakedness, bass), Tobbe “Little Boy” Zombiesson (drums, brain eating) and Matthias “Hiroshima” Gamma Rayson (guitar, bombing). Their Facebook is absolutely loaded with crap much like the above and their band history should be fuckin’ carved in stone. In terms of musical originality, things aren’t so rich. But if it’s battshit crazy, it doesn’t have to be!

The questions from this interview date back to the time that I reviewed Loch Vostok’s Dystopian, which is a few months ago. It was lying around somewhere and still needed some answers so I contacted Lars from Intromental Europe. Within five hours I had it returned, answered by the one and only Teddy Möller.

So, today is the day I discovered that my favourite Loch Vostok song Navigator is about a GPS in stead of about God and that Teddy Möller is a very “metal” guy.

So yeah, the evening of Monday November 7^th started with a huge fuckin’ disappointment: Omnium Gatherum. Not that they didn’t play well, I just wouldn’t know. Because I fuckin’ missed them. Because I was an hour fuckin’ late at the venue, The Garage, on Highbury Corner! Why was I an hour late for the band I wanted to see that night, the band I came for in the first place? Well not because I was a sloth and looked on my watch too late before I left! It was because the Neckbreaker’s Ball tour site stated the show would kick off at 5:45 pm, while in reality the show commenced at 4:45 pm.