Description
2011 cd release with 6 bonus tracks
Miasmal join the ranks of Bastard Priest, Tribulation and Tormented as one of the best old school death metal acts that Sweden has to offer us via the 21st century that it hadn’t offered us 20 years ago. For a debut album, this has just about everything you’d expect of the style: driving d-beat rhythms, insidious bursts of hideous agony, and a dire and oppressive atmosphere which feels like a mouthwash of grave dirt. The true strength of Miasmal must not come from originality, but the fact that they know precisely how to write their goddamn songs, setting appropriate moods to offset their turgid velocity. “Mesmerized” opens like a rampant war stomp, picking up into the expected energy of reliable d-beat death & roll ala Entombed or Desultory, and then seasoning with dour melodies. Several tracks intensify the inherent brutality, like “Equinox 432” and the grinding, all devouring “Toxic Beed”. Others like “Mists” counterbalance the onslaught with a measured, haunting atmosphere, created through clean guitars across the backdrop of sodden chords and then escalating into the fluid pummelling of their environs. Most importantly, though, this is a band who can write a good, halfway creative lick, and you’ll find these peppered through fare like “Chronicles” and others with enough frequency that you’ll simply never doze off through the entire experience (even the bonus content). With its great packaging, 8 tracks of fairly consistent strength and a dark, authentic energy coursing through its veins, Miasmal is surely one of the better retrograde Swedish death metal albums I’ve heard in recent months. It’s not perfect, as a lot of the core rhythms bear a familiar feel to them, but its fresher than a lot of other bands attempting to dig into the same tomb, and worth the investment if you’re a sucker for the style; perhaps even if you’re new to it.
Track list:
1. Mesmerized
2. Equinox 432
3. Blissful Cannonades
4. We Will Live Forever
5. Mists
6. Toxic Breed
7. Death Mask
8. Chronicles
9. Creation Of Fire-2010 EP
10. Bionic Godhead Erase-2010 EP
11. Abduction Of The Soul-demo 2008
12. Kallocain-demo 2008
13. Apocalypse Legion-demo 2008
14. Anima Sola-demo 2008