ENTRAILS - Raging Death

If you say you love old school death metal but don’t like this record, you have a serious problem. Entrails is one of the gems of the Swedish death metal scene. The band was created in 1990, but had the bad luck to release their first studio record 20 years later! I know, it seems like a hell of a lot and it may sound disarming to any band starting their journey, but it is about how much you want to succeed and about choices.

Raging Death is the band’s third studio album and it keeps the same coordinates as The Tomb Awaits (2011), but it is a bit further from Tales from the Morgue (2010). Between us, no matter how hard you try to write music the same way you did 20 years ago, you won’t manage. And here I’m thinking about much bigger names than Entrails such as Sepultura or Metallica. Going back to Raging Death, it is best described as old school death metal in the vein of Entombed with a healthy dose of Motorhead! Which about pretty cool if you like your metal harsh and uncompromising, direct, dirty and without more flourish than it is strictly necessary. So, what’s so great about this album? I like how they managed to capture the energy and intensity of the early years of the genre and, even though originality isn’t exactly their biggest strength, they manage to win at sincerity. It sounds authentic and they manage to avoid the trap of banal copy/paste. It is worth appreciating that the band uses contemporary production yet manages to keep an authentic sound for Swedish old school death metal.

They have not invented the wheel or the spinning wheel when it comes to death metal - I am reminded here of bands such as Demonical or Hail of Bullets, who are roughly on the same frequency as the subjects of this writing. But this is not a bad thing, for them or for Entrails. The future of cavernous death metal sounds good, despite all the trends that come and go.

H. Nota: 8