(written by Islander)
Not long ago we were musing around here about the emergence of silver linings around the black clouds of death and dissociation that shrouded the world during the covid pandemic. The lockdowns were miserable for many and welcome for some but disruptive for all. They shut down certain species of communal creative activity but spawned others. They forced a suspension of many plans, but by the same token that gave people room to ruminate about how to fill the unexpected open time in their lives.
The Swedish band Grand Cadaver, forged during the 2020 lockdown, was one of those silver linings. It led five old friends from Gothenburg and Stockholm to collectively indulge their shared a love for old-school, HM-2-drenched Swedish death metal: vocalist Mikael Stanne (Dark Tranquillity, The Halo Effect), guitarist Stefan Lagergren (The Grifted, ex-Treblinka/Tiamat), guitarist Alex Stjernfeldt (Novarupta, CHILD), bassist Christian Jansson (Pagandom, Dark Tranquillity), and drummer Daniel Liljekvist (Disrupted, Vorder, ex-Katatonia).
We’re told that their debut EP, Madness Comes, was recorded in just three days, and it was released in 2021 by Majestic Mountain Records. The band soon followed that with their debut album the same year, Into the Maw of Death. And fortunately for fans like us, Grand Cadaver still weren’t finished, even after the covid clouds passed.
More singles followed, along with a second album (Deities of Deathlike Sleep in 2023), and now Grand Cadaver have a new EP named The Rot Beneath due for release on August 15th via Majestic Mountain, giving us the occasion for the 10th (!) article/review we’ve written about Grand Cadaver since their spawning (the evidence is here). This time we’re premiering a song off the new EP named “Darkened Apathy“.
Photo Credit: Peter Trones
Beyond the bandmembers’ shared love of old school Swedeath, it seems one other thing might keep Grand Cadaver going: the world seems to be spiraling ever-faster down into the sewer. Here’s what they say about the new EP:
“When you look at the state of the world today, it’s difficult not to feel despair. We see madness, death, war, corruption and polarisation. And it makes you think, what are we if not the cause of the problem, what are we but the rot beneath? This is the anthem to mankind’s demise.”
The EP’s title song was made public first. It features distressing harmonies between a frantic lead-guitar and the churn of a bone-mangling rhythm guitar. It further includes chainsaw riffage that seem to slither, but also to jackhammer, along with drums that steadily snap and vividly bounce about. And of course, Mikael Stanne‘s ferocious vocals are distinctively savage.
On top of everything else, it’s a damned catchy song too, but with this band that’s not a shock.
And now we turn to the second single from the EP,”Darkened Apathy“, which is the final track on this four-song EP. Grand Cadaver introduce it this way: “The world is burning, and the people set it alight with indifference and apathy. A death metal protest song, where the wise are silenced and the unconcerned are in control.”
In alignment with those words, the slow-building song is both bleak and brutal, both steeped in agony and raging, both massively heavy and ethereally chilling. And it packs a viscerally potent rhythmic punch.
The track’s stricken opening melody, voiced by a lone guitar whose ringing tones are corroded, is a channel of grief and dismay — intersected by ominous and angry detonations whose reverberations sound like the sizzle of a radiation detector.
That grieving melody continues to slither forward but the anger in the music swells as the rhythm section hammer with greater vigor and the words come forth in harrowing howls and gritty, furious screams.
Grand Cadaver continue depressing their accelerator. The drums kick into a gallop; tremolo’d riffing creates a vicious sonic swarm that rabidly writhes as it desperately ascends and dismally descends; the vocals reach new fever pitches of serrated-edge ferocity; a lead guitar wails overhead.
When the band slow the pace once more, the music extrudes tendrils of melodic misery but also hammers hard, and then the song escalates to a crushing crescendo of rage and despair, with a reprise of the sorrowful opening melody to close things out.
It truly does sound like an anthem to mankind’s demise.
The Rot Beneath will be available on vinyl, and will coincide with a limited reissue of Grand Cadaver‘s debut full-length, Into the Maw of Death. Find more info via the links below.
PRE-ORDER:
https://www.majesticmountainrecords.com/products/grand-cadaver-the-rot-beneath-pre-order
GRAND CADAVER:
https://grandcadaver.com
https://www.facebook.com/grandcadaver
https://www.instagram.com/grandcadaver
https://grandcadaver.bandcamp.com
MAJESTIC MOUNTAIN:
https://www.facebook.com/majesticmountainrecords
https://www.instagram.com/majesticmountainrecords
https://majesticmountainrecords.bigcartel.com