Customer Reviews

Fiendish Regression

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

One of the original Swedish Death Metal Bands come out again with another glorious album. This guys are just old school. The album is not a brutal metal cd, but it certainly is an aggressive one. It does have a bunch of double bass drumming, but not overdone like Morbid Angel or Suffocation. They just play with very catchy riffs and lyrics. If you like BloodBath, Decapitation you are certainly going to like this one.

Fav Songs: Last Journey, Awakening, Trial by Fire.

Good death metal by the masters. Nothing technicality or constant change of tempos, only great riffs, terrible vocals and solid musicianship. This is a solid release that you need in your collection. So if you like Unleashed, Entombed(early) and Vomitory, try this!!!

Grave. If you can't guess by the name, the band plays Death Metal. Speaking from experience, the words "Death Metal" evoke thoughts of pounding double bass and intense drumming coupled with fast, brutal, and insanely technical riffs and a brutal and gutteral vocal delivery. Bands like Cryptopsy and Suffocation come to mind.

If you go into Grave's "Fiendish Regression" expecting something like that, you will be dissapointed.

I was one of the people who started to listen to this expecting something of the typical Death Metal vein, so I was in for somewhat of a dissapointment. It was considerably slower than what I expected, the double bass was sparcely used, and the vocals sucked. However, I heard a lot of praise about this album and continued to listen. I soon found that this album is not a typical Death Metal fare, but a slow-paced, groove-laden slab of Death Metal, and it's good stuff.

Like I said, this is considerably slower than Hate Eternal ever will be, but the slow, deliberate pace works for the album with some really groovy passages and some of the most headbangable riffs to come out in 2004. However, when the band breaks away from the slow tempos that dominate this album and speed up it's really something to behold, but before you know it they slow back down again. It makes me wish they'd speed up more often, but the groove throughout the albm is undeniably awesome.

The production is quite thin, however. There's not enough meat to the guitars so they sometimes end up sounding quite dreary, and the drums are not nearly thick enough to back up the music presented here. The vocals are forefront and they, quite frankly, suck, but you don't hear too much from them.

There's not a bad song on the album, but at the end of the day, they all wind up sounding very similar. Who cares, though? What you have here is some solid groove-laden Death Metal; nothing fancy, no finger-twisting technicality, no speed-demon drumming, just some good Death Metal. What little diversity the album offers is done so through varying tempos, but a vast majority are either slow or mid-paced, so diversity is not too abundant. Thusly, no songs really stand out, and the album is best taken in as a whole.

All in all, if you want Death Metal, pick up Hate Eternal's "I, Monarch". However, if you want some atypical Death Metal that's not afraid to slow down, this is for you.

This is Grave's second CD after their comeback that started with 2002's Back From the Grave. That album was a great comeback, with some traditional Grave grooves and headbanging riffs, but it lacked speed. Fiendish Regression more than makes up for that.

Grave's longtime drummer, Jensa Paulsson is not around for this CD, but his replacement seems to have energized the band. For the first time in a long, long time, you hear blast beats in Grave songs! This album also features several songs that are a bit of a throwback to their thrashy sound from the early demos. I definitely get a strong sense of You'll Never See-era Grave from this one. Ola's vocals seem to be getting a bit better as he gets more accustomed to pure death metal vocals, as opposed to his death n' roll style on Hating Life.

Overall, this is one of my favorite Grave albums. Here are a few notes on each song:

"Last Journey"- Not the strongest opening track ever, but showing a continuation of the Back From the Grave sound. Slow and catchy.

"Reborn"- Grave finally showing speed again. A couple of blast beats and fast, brutal mid-section.

"Awakening"- Very thrashy verses, and one of my favorite slow Grave riffs ever in the chorus.

"Breeder"- Awesome song, very fast, but also a great mid-paced opening riff.

"Trial By Fire"- I usually think Salem witch trial songs are tired, but this one is actually somewhat creepy with direct quotes from judges. Also very thrashy and catchy verses.

"Out of the Light"- Another fast song with lyrics along Grave's familiar anti-Christian themes.

"Inner Voice"- I think this song would be right at home on Soulless. Similar sound and lyrical content about insanity.

"Bloodfeast"- Straight up old school death/thrash. Another great song.

"Heretic"- Solid metal song to close the album, featuring very heavy drums.

The CD also has two bonus tracks at the end, a St. Vitus song "Burial At Sea" and the song "Autopsied." These are both good tracks to listen to if you want a little bit more after the album itself. If you're a Grave fan, you'll love this album. If you're a death metal fan, you should still like it enough to listen to it often.

These guys and Unleashed were the first Swedish Death Bands I got into, way back when they released their first CD's. This one blew me away. I thought Grave would never release an album with as much ferocity as their debut, but they did that and more with Fiendish Regression. This is a CD like the stuff Incantation has been putting out. It's heavy, fast, doomy, and brutal all at the same time. I couldn't find one song I didn't think deserved less than 5 stars. Think the first Grave stoned out of its mind, on a rampage for your soul and you have the description of this monster release. Don't pass it up.