BLOODBATH: Survival Of The Sickest (DEATH METAL): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

At irregular intervals, Bloodbath escapes from its cellar to offer us a new slice of old school death metal. Initially a supergroup gathering four cult figures of the Swedish extreme chapel (two Katatonia, one Opeth and Dan Swanö) willing to enjoy themselves by going back to their death metal roots, Bloodbath still is, even if its members have changed over the years, but it has mostly turned into a full-fledged band, which releases records, tours and ends up not surprising anymore. This being so, considering the talent gathered, can this (now) Anglo-Swedish set-up disappoint? The core group composed of Anders Nyström and Jonas Renkse, completed since 2014 by Nick Holmes, the singer of Paradise Lost is not really known for botching its albums, faithful to immutable quality standards.

Four years after "The Arrow Of Satan Is Drawn", "Survival Of The Sickest" finally arrives without trying to change a proven recipe, simmered in the original death metal cauldron, Swedish (Entombed) or American (Morbid Angel). Technically, it is irreproachable. Holmes executes speleological descents at the bottom of a mine, the guitars are tuned lower than the ground and the accent is put on feverish brutality ('Zombie Inferno'). The atmosphere is sinister, less however than on 'Grand Morbid Funeral' (2014).

But in the end, what can we retain from this sixth full-length carnage? A Barney Greenaway (Napalm Death) who comes to howl on a 'Putrefying Corpse' of an epidermal violence, tracks sometimes heavily morbid ('Dead Parade'), generally frenetic and testing our brains ('Malignant Maggot Therapy'), or even macerating on the borders of a suffocating doom death as evidenced by the terminal 'No God Before Me' with its original macabre groove.

"Survival Of The Sickest" sees the quintet doing Bloodbath. No more and no less. It has the experience and the undeniable talent of its progenitors but the freshness and the spontaneity of the beginnings have long since evaporated. This explains why "Survival Of The Sickest" is of course a solid album but which will not however carve lasting scars in the flesh... - Official website

BLOODBATH

SURVIVAL OF THE SICKEST

NAPALM RECORDS

DEATH METAL