(Today we bring you Zoltar‘s review of the recently released third album by the Swedish death metal band Disrupted.)
There’s a good reason why Lik got signed to Metal Blade Records a few years back, and no, it hasn’t anything to do with both their guitar players joining respectively Katatonia and Bloodbath. No, if on the surface their classic down-to-earth approach to SweDeath may not look and sound that much different from the 7,564 Entombed clones popping out here and there (although it should be said that their main influence remains Dismember but I digress), underneath the fat layers of HM-2 effects pedals and downtuned guitar, they had, one could say, class. Yep, that extra-but-fuck-I-can’t-really-put-my-finger-on-it-although-it’s-here element, that Midas Touch if you will, that set them apart. Or maybe they just had better songs?
Off Ludvika in the dead center of the country, the very same little town where Peter Tägtgren’s Abyss studio is located, Disrupted have the same problem, so to speak. To those of the outside, they’ll probably look like another bunch of dudes pretending it’s 1993 all over again who hired Daniel Liljekvist back in 2018 right after he had left his drum stool in Katatonia (them again) to get some attention. Especially since their early material – 2014’s Heavy Death EP and the equally imaginatively-titled Morbid Death three years later – didn’t exactly set the world on fire.
Photo by Daniel Jansson
But in 2020, Pure Death (see any pattern here?) swept the plate clean by being faster, meaner, and heavier. Wait, HEAVIER was more like it. Although it took forever to give birth to its follow-up, the just released Stinking Death simply nails it even more vigorously…
See, no matter how much we all love (come on, admit it) those famous buzzsaw-sounding guitars and D-beat parts, let’s be honest: too many so-called SweDeath bands out there tend to be a bit, erm, lazy. They’re just happy exhibiting those key elements without trying to give their music the extra push it’d deserve to make a difference. But Disrupted do that by being concise, always on the hunt, and brutal-as-fuck. And, nevermind being a bit hellbent on the word, heavy. Heavy as fuck obviously.
Like their fellow countrymen Crawl, and the equally vicious yet overlooked second album Altar Of Disgust released last May, Stinking Death is as Swedish as it can be yet in a very nasty way, jumping at you whenever it’s got the chance to rip your freakin’ throat. And come on, how could a band with a frontman (also seen/heard in Uncanny) with long hair and a half-shaven head à la Blacky from Voivod not be good? Oh and did I mention it’s heavy?
Stinking Death is out now on vinyl on Trust No One Recordings
https://disrupted.bandcamp.com/album/stinking-death/
https://www.facebook.com/disruptedofficial