Vomitory do not belong among the oldest death metal bands coming from Sweden, but their music closely follow traditions set by the country's pioneering deathsters. However, this is not enough said about 'Raped in Their Own Blood', Vomitory's debut album.
Musically, most of the songs sound like their titles. For example, 'Nervegasclouds' and 'Inferno' are brutal blast-fests while 'Dark Grey Epoch' and 'Sad Fog over Sinister Runes' are more horror-tinged songs. Ripping aggression plays a bigger part on this album, although there's a good slab of eerie vibes, too. The slower songs, in which these horror songs belong to, are longer, but there's quite a lot of tempo changes in them. Most of the fast stuff has also slower headbanging parts to give a breather or two for a listener. The compositions are not the most primal stuff ever, but it's really pretty much a lost labour to search any huge melody work, although there's some great lead work, e.g. on 'Thorns'. Vomitory are about riffs and beats and vocals. Since this is Swedish death metal, some punk influences can be heard (not quite Machetazo, but some D-beats for example) and 'Pure Death' the band sound more like a death metal version of German thrashers Sodom. And there's some Bolt Thrower moments on the album, too. The vocals are low roar spiced with higher growls. I like more of the faster stuff, because when the band hits the right gear, they roll over you without mercy. However, the slower songs really do embody massive amounts of atmosphere.
There's no showing off in performance, but the band seemed to have great time recording this. Many a song lacks of a guitar solo and that's a good example of the vibe. There's a good amount of sweat and beer in the playing. This album belongs to infamous "what production?" league. Okay, to be fair, every instrument is well audible in the mix. Rawest edge was cut off by the use of reverb on the vocals. This kind of effect works better on horror atmosphere, not so well for more aggressive death metal. The guitars buzz too much for my liking and it's left for the bass and the kick drums to handle the lower end. Which they luckily do. The lyrics are above average and there's loads of 'em. War, death (oh, really?) and arcane things are the themes. My version is The Plague (a subsidiary of late Hammerheart Records) re-release from 1999, but I think this is an exact copy of the original Fadeless Records version. The prints look like they've been scanned from the original version and then reprinted. But the cover art is a tad lame anyway.
During its best moments, this really rips and sounds fucking good, but there's also some slightly colourless moments. The production also affects negatively to the score. But if you're searching for true brutal Swedish death metal, this is the one album you should check out ASAP. As the title track says it: "Death metal traitors die, raped in their own blood."
Rating: 7½ (out of 10) ratings explained
Reviewed by Lane
08/24/2004 20:33