UMUR
"Tales of Madness" is the fifth full-length studio album by Swedish death metal act Wombbath. The album was released through Transcending Obscurity Records in December 2020 and it´s the band´s second 2020 album as they also released "Choirs of the Fallen" in March 2020. There´s been one lineup change since the predecessor as bassist Matt Davidson has been drafted. "Tales of Madness" is a slightly different album release as it features both new original tracks and re-recordings of older material. "Brutal Mights", "Tales from the Dark Side", and "Unholy Madness" are for example re-recordings of tracks which originally appeared on the 1992 "Brutal Mights" demo, while "Lavatory Suicide Remains" is a re-recorded track from the 1994 "Lavatory" EP.
Stylistically some of the material are therefore a bit more brutal than the last couple of releases by Wombbath. Wombbath started out playing a US influenced death metal style, but after their 2014 comeback their albums have featured a more "regular" old school Swedish death metal style. The buzzsaw guitar tone (which Wombbath did not use on their original 90s material) which is omnipresent on all tracks on "Tales of Madness" makes even the older re-recorded tracks sound Swedish. It´s interesting how much sound productions mean to a recording. Upon conclusion "Tales of Madness" is a both well composed, well performed, and well produced release, and a 3 - 3.5 star (65%) rating is warranted.
