(written by Islander)
We’re about to present a new EP that’s a prime example of music that’s vitriolic and vicious, ferocious and vile, yet as catchy as whatever respiratory virus is now asserting its dominance over a pitiful humanity. It doesn’t play to the cheap seats — it hates you and wants to eat you alive — but even while it’s ruthlessly gutting its listeners and ravenously consuming the remains behind truly abominable vocals, it does so with a flair that’s viscerally compelling.
We’re talking about a new four-track barrage from the Swedish death metal band Övervåld (though it wouldn’t be wrong to brand the new EP “blackened death metal”). The EP’s name is Vigrav and it will be released on CD and digitally by the band on April 20th, with a vinyl edition expected in May via Seven Metal Inches Records. Here’s how Övervåld introduce it:
When people ask us what Vigarv is about, the only thing that really comes to mind is this: it’s dark, aggressive, and pure misanthropy — distilled into four tracks of unrelenting fury. There’s no polish, no pretense — just raw emotion, blistering riffs, and a deep loathing for the state of things.
The word Vigarv is an old Swedish term for revenge — and that’s exactly what this EP feels like to us. A reckoning. A retaliation.
Övervåld introduced the EP with a blood-colored video showing their performance of its opening song, “Förruttnelse“. Lots of things about the music stand out quickly: The high whine of riffage that writhes, roils, and heaves, manifesting a poisonous viciousness through its maniacal vibrations. The vivid battering, bounding, and snapping of the drums. The frightening malice and malignancy expressed in Rebecca Holm‘s deep and savage roars. And though the bass has a warm tone, it rumbles and undulates like a sinister subterranean serpent not found in nature.
The video includes fleeting imagery of diabolically hideous creatures, but the diabolical music would conjure such visions anyway. The circle-saw riffing swarms and eviscerates, and it also charges and slashes. The drums blast like automatic weaponry and canter like a hell-steed’s hooves. The vocals erupt in maddened howls. The bass throbs like a hungry heart. The song reaches crescendos of violent madness — and it’s all exhilarating to hear.
Music this ravenous and scathing isn’t usually “catchy”, but “Förruttnelse” is, and, as we observed above, that turns out to be a quality of the other three songs on the EP too.
“Lögnarnas Tempel” again deploys distorted guitar tones that sound like the aural equivalent of sprayed grit soaked in acid, and in this song the riffing rabidly pulsates, dismally slithers, and freakishly boils, once again undergirded by abyssal bass rumbles and neck-cracking beats, and fronted by hell-mastiff vocals that bark the words fast as they come for your throat.
Then comes the title track, the one meaning revenge, and it is indeed a vengeful onslaught, a combination of wrathful snarls and unhinged howls, turbocharged percussive fusillades and caustic chords that seethe and burst — but this time the band close their attack with a slower stomping and lurching cadence and infiltrate that cold crushfest with the piercing tones of a crazed yet supernaturally chilling guitar solo and a final flood of scathing feedback.
And last we have “Smärta Som Belöning“. Launched with a rocking groove and a feral punk-ish riff, it also gets more vicious, with the fretwork generating a dense and demented swarm and Rebecca Holm growling and baying like an enraged panther. Probably the most flagrantly head-moving track on the EP, it still includes variations in the riffing, which rises in bizarre expressions of ecstasy and also gruesomely oozes agony as the pacing slows.
Rebecca Holm is joined on the EP by Joachim Lyngfelt (Crawl, ex-Decomposed) and Peter Engström (ex-Setherial). The EP is available for pre-order now.
PRE-ORDER:
https://overvald.bandcamp.com/album/vigarv
ÖVERVÅLD:
https://linktr.ee/overvald