Necrospective: GOD MACABRE

~~I am going to see the band live in a few days~~ I have seen this band live a few days ago so I thought I’d give a spin to these old records once more ~~before the show~~ and share a little bit of thoughts on this great stuff.

The 7″ on Corpsegrinder and the MBR Cd

Macabre End “Consumed By Darkness” demotape/7″

The band started out as a group with a swedish name – which I THINK roughly translates to “The bottom of the bottle” – which I have never had the chance to hear. In any case that’s not of any relevance as this demo is where the good shit started to grind. Macabre End’s (and God Macabre too) sound could be described as a thick blend of Carnage chunky riffs, Paradise Lost harmonies and some Autopsy sickness here and there. Being Autopsy my all time fave band, with Carnage in the top five right behind, I think it’s superfluous to say I pretty much worship this kind of stuff. To simply define them as melodic Death Metal would be blasphemous since the real core of these songs is brutal, downtuned and straightforward, with a rather powerful vocalist on top of it all. Where the (early!) PL influences I mentioned before could be heard is not within the single riff but mostly in bridges and well distinct sections so that no overall brutality is compromised and at the the same time they add variety to maintain freshness and substance, The demo tape DOES have a different sound actually but for once the new mix on th 7″ does not compromise the face-forward brutality of the Swedish sound and I would dare to say for once that some keyboards, when properly placed, do nothing to diminish it either. The songs are the same though and Corpsegrinder in my opinion used to delived yet another good bullet here for its short life span.

God Macabre “The Winterlong…”

The band changed name here for a MLp on that weird label Mangled Beyond Recognition which also gave us orgasms with releases like Crematory, Insanity and the vinyl repress of Grave’s awesome “Anatomia Corporis Humani”. The sound didn’t flinch at all from the previous recordings as we still have the truculent, tenebrous, Carnage core (I can’t really play a shit but I would bet at least two of these riffs are also present on “Infestation Of Evil”) with slow, grinding and malignant passages typical of Autopsy and those earlier British attempts at a more melodic (but not mellow) form of gothic-Death. At 30-score minutes, it is considered a Mini Lp even if in the post-Reign In Blood era I guess we could have stretched it a bit and define it a borderline full-length. One of the song (“Spawn Of Flesh” which from what I read has supposedly a “vegan” message) has been brought here from the Macabre End days. I don’t have the Relapse version but from what I read they included the Macabre End demo in that new edition. The guy in Nuclear Winter told me years ago he was considering releasing this album on vinyl. How it ended up being pressed by a different label instead is a story I have no information about. The cool news is Relapse is pressing its own vinyl version this year with a limited edition colored vinyl only for their mailorder so if you missed it back then this is the right time to act. The diehard version comes with a cool set of action figures as well. Just kidding, eh (that is Grave).

“Eve Of Souls Forsaken” Live

We are living in hard times, where you have to be quick or very rich to get all the cool shit that gets released (or re-released). This is a limited edition live from 1991 which saw the light a couple of years ago and gets sold nowadays for over 100 bucks. Alternatively you could be a dick like me, and don’t give a fuck about live albums, ah ah! I admit it would be nice to have anyway. I have never heard it so I can’t give you much more detail on this release.

Notes

Suppuration

Guitarist Ola used to write a fanzine called Suppuration, some nice guy scanned it and created a gallery on VKontakte, download it here if you want to have a look.

2013 Concert in Italy

Like I said before I was lucky enough to attend to their show in Brescia (which I have been told was their first show ever out of Sverige) during which they really managed to crush everything. The sound was massive and the vocalist still has the same deep, powerful vocals. Have a look yourself at the show, I took these videos with my phone in a rather unfortunate position, so please forgive me for the sound quality.