Bloodbath is fucking sick. To quote Noisecreep, because they called it right: “When you can count vocalist Mikael Åkerfeldt (Opeth), guitarists Anders Nyström and Per Eriksson (Katatonia), bassist Jonas Renkse (Katatonia), and drummer Martin Axenrot (Opeth) in your band’s lineup, you definitely have the right to brag.”
Bloodbath’s three studio albums and two EPs kill shit, and they’re among our favorites here at the NCS Island. Unfortunately, the band doesn’t play live shows very often, but the one they did at the UK’s Bloodstock festival was captured on film and it’s about to be released (on April 25) by Peaceville Records in a DVD called Bloodbath Over Bloodstock. The DVD is also supposed to include a 16-page booklet, bonus footage taken from the PartySan Festival in 2008, and extensive band member interviews.
Today, the aforementioned Noisecreep exclusively premiered an excerpt from the DVD, with Bloodbath playing the song “Eaten”, from the band’s Nightmares Made Flesh album. It’s fucking sick. Watch it here after the jump (and thank you, Noisecreep).
Too bad they kicked out Dan Swano, the guy who wrote ‘Eaten’. He was half the band, lol.
If you ask me, The Fathomless Mastery (and the Unblessing The Purity EP) took a pretty huge hit in quality due to a lack of Swano’s influence. The album lacks a lot of the melodic moments that really hit home on Nightmares Made Flesh.
I have man-love for Dan Swano, so I’m not disagreeing that Nightmares Made Flesh is superior. They also had Peter Tagtgren on vocals for Nightmares. But I still liked The Fathomless Mastery a bunch.
Don’t get me wrong, The Fathomless Mastery is still a good album.
But Renske and Eriksson’s songs aren’t anywhere near as good as what was done on earlier albums. Eriksson’s songs in particular are just awkward. Renske’s stuff is exceptionally repetitive and generally follows the same song structures and whatnot. The whole album kinda feels repetive. And thats not something that was on Nightmares Mades Flesh, which I think is specifically due to Swano’s songs. His writting style is so different from Blakkheim and Renske that it gave listeners a nice breather.
And your right, Tagtgren’s vocals were just amazing. That certainly added to it.
I also, have admitted “man-love” for Swano, haha. I’m a Swano super freak and collect everything he’s worked on.
A friend and myself tried documenting everything we knew he worked on in some regard (whether it be demo, single, full length or what have you and he could have mixed, mastered, recorded, performed on, guested, ect). We got to just over 250 releases and then decided the list was far too exhausting, lol.
Wow! I knew it had to be a lot. And it seems like there are new albums featuring his production work coming out every other week. Just looking at what we’ve written about since the beginning of this year, he produced the new album by Exeloume, new music by Torture Division, the new album by Communic, the new album by Mygrain, the new album by My Own Grave, the new album by The Project Hate, the new album by Omnium Gatherum, and the remastering of some older albums by Desultory that are going to be re-released this year. The guy is amazing.
Also, do you know about “The Unisound Guestbook”?
https://www.nocleansinging.com/2011/01/02/dan-swano-the-unisound-guestbook/
Yup! I’m pretty active on Dan’s forum. He has spoken about his various guestbooks a number of times before he decided to scan one.
We made that list a couple years ago. We were compiling it in alphabetical order. And got to the O’s when we called it quits. So I can how big a number it woula been if we had everything. A lot of it came from mine and other people’s personal collections. And stuff we were told by Dan himself that he worked on. Most of it was some pretty obscure demo tapes and whatnot. But I remember, we were bugging Dan to release info on those guestbooks for a while, so we could have those to help with. He finally did, just a couple years later, haha.
Well, that is very cool. Thanks for doing your part to get him to release the guestbooks. It really is a part of metal history that should be shared (and now is being shared).
mikael’s voice sounds strange, with less power and projection. i just wish he had more stage presence, he looks confused without his guitar.
anyway i fucking love bloodbath (mikael or dan swano), and catching these guys play live is like winning the lottery, should be one hell of a killer show.
i meant peter tagtgren not dan swano
I think Mikael Åkerfeldt looks like Mr. Cool, with those aviator shades he always seems to wear and his cool banter. He doesn’t have a Mr. Evil persona, just seems like he’s having the time of his life, and knows it — an aura of “it’s good to be me.”
Yeah his voice is definitely not in shape for this DVD. I hope he’s not getting old lol
This makes me happy. Thanks for putting this up! I will definately be getting this.
This gets me all soggy in the nether regions! I had the joy of being there and getting a bunch of people to sing Fetus instead of Eaten…….much-o-beer was obviously part of this equation.
I also saw them at Graspop, it was hilarious, Mikael was totally wasted and had great pleasure in sharing that with the crowd, he still performed an amazing set, one that I actually considered superior to their Bloodstock appearance.
Dude, I am massively envious. So cool that you were at that Bloodstock show, and at Graspop too. I’m definitely getting the Bloodstock DVD, but it would have been better to have it as a memento of experiencing the real thing. 🙂
I’ll be somewhere on that dvd. Somewhere middle-to-back in the crowd. Keep an eye out for me! Ha. (Got to watch them from side-stage at Bloodsstock too last year… where Mikael Akerfeldt kept using his chance to get a drink of water to revise the lyrics for each song.).
Weighing in on the debate about Bloodbath’s best years, I honestly think that the music on “The Fathomless Mastery” is better overall, actually a bit more “modern” sounding in places than the pure old-school worship which characterised “Resurrection…” and permeated through some of “Nightmares…”, although Dan Swano will always be missed. I Just think that “Fathomless…” has a bit more bite to it.
BUT…
Peter Tagtren is the superior death vocalist. Don’t get me wrong, Mikael Akerfeldt is probably the better vocalist overall, but generally speaking Peter is a dedicated DM growler, with just a generally deeper and more evil sounding voice. But I suppose it’s six of one, half a dozen of the other between them in many ways.
I do love how, after Akerfeldt left originally as he was too busy with Opeth they replaced him with Peter Tagtren… the one man in Sweish death metal who is actually BUSIER than Mr. Akerfeldt. Amusing. (Seriously… Hypocrisy, Pain, owns a town, is a world-renowned producer with his own studio… what were they thinking???)
For side-stage at “Bloodstock” read “Hellfest”… I have a condition called “stupid fingers”.
I wouldn’t worry about it. I often suffer from what small children have termed “stupid head”, yet I still manage to feed myself.
I think these notes about being there are the result of some kind of conspiracy between you and Bob to ruin my day.
Excellent (and very funny) point about enlisting Tagtgren to replace Akerfeldt when he got too busy with his other projects. And speaking of Tagtgren’s death vocals, I got an e-mil from David Wallin (the drummer in Pain) in response to our recents posts about that “Dirty Woman” song, and he says we can look forward to plenty of non-clean vocals on the new Pain album. Yum.
Tbh I like Pain being different from Hypocrisy, so don’t mind him using cleans… I like cleans!
But still, it will be an awesome album.
Don’t get me wrong — I really like Tagtgren’s cleans in Pain, too. But I got that weakness for the growly stuff.