Kev Rowland There have been a few changes since 2018’s, ‘Chaos Manifesto’, with original drummer Ronnie Bergerstål re-joining the band (he played on the first three albums, leaving in 2011) and a new singer in Christofer Säterdal, but founder bassist Martin Schulman has marshalled the troops and here they are back with their sixth album. This is Swedish Death Metal, but with more of an emphasis on the pure metal side as opposed to ramming full-on death down our throats. It always makes for a pleasant experience when a Swedish death band play true to their roots, and this is definitely the case here with the band trying to reproduce the sound coming of studios in the late Eighties/early Nineties. They mix and move the tempo around so while they are always with that heavy HM-2 sound, they can drop into the likes of doom in “The Thin Darkness” and still get away with it.

There is plenty of inherent melody within this, and the vocals are gruff but understandable, without any of the over-the-top aggression and guttural attack that one would think of when looking at Floridian death metal for example. Here we have a band combining the likes of Amon Amarth and Entombed and doing a damned good job of it. It may not be anything dramatically new, but they know what they are doing and have set out to deliver just that. When they rip it up on the likes of “We Stand As One” then all the listeners can do is smile, as these guys have set their sights on a simple direction and are certainly getting there. Mixing and mastering were handled by Karl Daniel Lidén (Bloodbath, Katatonia) and he captured a nice big sound with plenty of depth – well worth investigating.

Nightfly Released in 2007, Servants Of The Unlight is the debut album from Swedish death metal band Demonical. It’s clearly of the old school persuasion featuring the raw guitar sound pioneered in death metal circles by the likes of Entombed and Dismember. Whilst you won’t find anything original here and it’s pretty much death metal by numbers, Demonical have a clear grasp on what’s required to pull off a decent old school style album.

All the trademarks are present and correct aided by strong musicianship with the usual array of frantic blast beats/double kick drums, crushing and raw guitar riffs and decent vocals. Whilst there’s nothing that particularly stands out, equally there’s nothing bad either. Songs like Revel In Misanthropia, Slaughter Of All Hope and United In Torture are enjoyable enough but just lack that edge to make them particularly memorable. Some changes of pace add some variety like on Burned Alive, its intro having a doom feel until it kicks in to top gear. A bit more of this would have been most welcome.

I found this review quite difficult to write, not because Servants Of The Unlight is a bad album, it is in fact quite a good one. It just lacks a distinctive edge to set it apart from the pack and therefore it was difficult to say anything original or particularly meaningful about it. Nevertheless you could do far worse than devote just over half an hour of your time checking this out.

Vehemency Buzzing and sawing guitars, death reeking growls, morbid atmosphere - yep, pure old school Swedish death metal is once again the name of the game, this time on Demonical’s third full-length offering Death Infernal which doesn’t truly surprise with its music, but since when has that been the point? The album simply showcases how brutal, coffin-like death metal is supposed to be spewed and it’s up to the listener if that’s enough for his musical preferences.

Actually I lie a little when I say that there’s no surprises here. For the most part, as tracks on the first half like the savage ”Ravenous” and the mid-tempo ”Return in Flesh” imply, Demonical stays true to its Entombed influences, but as soon as the seventh song ”All Will Perish (The Final Liberation)" begins, one can notice the evident melodic death metal elements of Amon Amarth, and this continues throughout the last tracks ”Slain Warriors” and ”Darkness Awaits”. The two additional bonus songs retain the same melodic inclination, including the Emperor cover ”Night of the Graveless Souls”.

Delving deeper into the compositions, it must be admitted by everyone that Demonical does know how to craft captivating death metal pieces. This becomes clear right on the first track ”The Arrival of Armageddon” that goes up and down the fretboard with ingenious riffs and on ”Black Inferno” where Bloodbath esque malicious melodies appear in front of the distorted low-pitch instrumentation. Some stagnation is to be found from the album as well but nothing totally fatal that would make the listening experience an annoyance in any way.

Despite that the occasional melodic death elements are somewhat refreshing to hear on an album of this sort, I find those tracks to be the album’s weakest links, as Death Infernal seems to be at its best during the most brutal assaults. To conclude my nagging, the production could be a bit filthier as there’s slight sterileness in the sound, so that it’s not quite like the dirty eponymoys Interment album, for instance. In the end, Death Infernal leaves a positive taste, and is definitely recommendable for the lovers of the genre, and I mean those who still can endure the similar ideas initiated in the early 90s already.