UMUR
"Into the Grave" is the debut full-length studio album by Swedish death metal act Grave. The album was released in August 1991 by Century Media Records. Grave were one of the most prolific names on the Swedish death metal demo scene in the late eighties/ early nineties and "Into the Grave" firmly put them on the map internationally too.
The music on "Into the Grave" is "classic" old school Swedish death metal. The means pretty simple, brutal, mid- to fast paced death metal. "Into the Grave" was produced by Thomas Skogsberg and Grave at Sunlight Studios and that´s audible. The downtuned guitars has that characteristic Sunlight buzzsaw tone and the production is generally dark and a bit muddy sounding. The vocals by frontman Jorgen Sandström are very brutal yet slightly intelligeble. The gory/ horror lyrical themes are typical for the time and songtitles like "Deformed" and "Extremely Rotten Flesh" are representative of those themes.
The 11 tracks on the 42:24 minutes long album lack a bit in the variation department but other than that I´m pretty sure fans of the genre have endless praise for "Into the Grave". Personally the lack of variation is an issue to me and it´s not more than a couple of songs into the album before my attention begins to wander. I´d say a 3 star rating is warranted.