Jan 172017
 

 

Until 2015, Wombbath’s last album was 1993’s classic Internal Caustic Torments, but two years ago the band made a remarkable reappearance with Downfall Rising. That new album made a big impact on lovers of Swedish death metal worldwide, and was the source of a song we humbly anointed one of 2015’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs.

Wombbath followed the release of Downfall Rising with a triumphant performance at 2016’s Maryland Deathfest (reported here), and two 2016 split releases, one with Revel in Flesh called Dragged Into the Obscure and another with Departed Souls entitled Embracing the Cold…. And now they’re participating in another new split release — and we’re fortunate to bring you the premiere of Wombbath’s side, a song called “Smell of Lice“.

The name of the new split is Upward On A Thousand Lies, and on this new release Wombbath are sharing the vinyl with Germany’s Obscure Infinity. The split was released on January 13th on multi-colored wax by Germany’s Brutal Art Records. Continue reading »

Dec 142016
 

 

(Jonny Pettersson is a busy man, with leading roles in such groups as Wombbath, Ashcloud, Just Before Dawn, and Ursinne, as well as his excellent new solo project Henry Kane. Fortunately, he found time to graciously accept our invitation to share a year-end list of favorite releases.)

 

brutally-deceased-satanic-corpse

1. Brutally Deceased – Satanic Corpse (Death metal)

This album had me blown away. It’s the perfect mix of buzzsaw death metal and blasting brutality.

Continue reading »

Jul 182016
 

Wombbath-Departed Souls split

 

For us, one of the bright spots of 2015 was the revival of Sweden’s Wombbath and the release of Downfall Rising, the band’s first album since 1993’s classic Internal Caustic Torments (and the source of this killer track that appeared on our 2015 Most Infectious Song list). Wombbath also started 2016 in fine form by participating in a split release with Revel in Flesh called Dragged Into the Obscure (which we wrote about here)  and delivering a live performance in Baltimore that was one of the highlights of this year’s Maryland Deathfest (reviewed here). But there’s still more to come, as you’re about to discover with your very own ears.

Wombbath are participating in another split, this time with the Dutch band Departed Souls, and today we’re helping premiere Wombbath’s track from the split — “Embrace Death“. Continue reading »

Jun 022016
 

Wombbath at MDF-photo by Bryan Zakala

Wombbath at MDF – photo by Bryan Zakala

 

When I started this recap of Maryland Deathfest XIV a couple of days ago (here), I explained that I didn’t intend to report on the festival day-by-day, as I’ve done in previous years, but instead decided to focus on the best performances I saw, grouped into four loosely defined categories. In that introductory post, I only wrote about one band (Dragged Into Sunlight), because their set was the best one I saw at this year’s edition of MDF.

DIS happens to be in one of those four categories, but I’m going to leave that one for another day. Today I want to focus on one of the others, which I’m labeling Swedish (and Dutch) Death Metal Supremacy.

But first I want to publicly thank these four dudes: Continue reading »

Mar 282016
 

Wombbath-Revel In Flesh split cover

 

Man, it annoys the hell out of me when I actually have to work at the job that pays me instead of sitting around all day listening to metal and foaming at the mouth about it here. But I can only stand so much of that serious work before I have to take a break and see what new music the day has brought me. Here’s what I found — new music from a trio of bands that has greatly improved my sour mood.

WOMBBATH

For me, one of the bright spots of 2015 was the revival of Sweden’s Wombbath and the release of Downfall Rising, the band’s first album since 1993’s classic Internal Caustic Torments (and the source of this killer track that I included in our 2015 Most Infectious Song list). And now Wombbath are starting out 2016 in fine form by participating in a split release with Revel in Flesh called Dragged Into the Obscure — which will be released on April 1 by Unholy Prophecies and features grisly artwork by Juanjo Castellano. Continue reading »

Feb 142016
 

Wombbath-Downfall Rising

 

I’m not finished with this list, but I’m making myself stop. It’s the middle of February, and I ought to be using the time I’ve been spending on this focusing on 2016 releases. But I still can’t help but feel bad that I’m stopping without having mentioned all the other 2015 songs I’ve heard that are as deserving as the songs that are on this list.

Tomorrow I’ll have a wrap-up post, with a complete list of all the songs and links for listening to them. Here are the last four, and I’m closing out this list with some good old death metal.

WOMBBATH

Until last year, Wombbath’s last album was 1993’s classic Internal Caustic Torments. The group that recorded Downfall Rising isn’t the same band from more than 20 years ago — vocalist/bassist Jonny Petterson (Ashcloud, Syn:drom, etc.), guitarists Al Riglin and Taylor Nordberg (Infernaeon), and drummer Jeramie Kling (Infernaeon, The Absence) joined forces with founding guitarist Håkan Stuvemark for this new album — but they upheld the Wombbath name and reputation very well. Continue reading »

Dec 152015
 

Jonny Pettersson

(We invited Jonny Pettersson — vocalist and riff-maker at Wombbath, Lieutenant General at Just before Dawn, and vocalist/guitarist at Ashcloud (among many other projects) — to let us share with our readers his year-end list for 2015, and we are grateful that he agreed!)

I started this list thinking that this year it would be easy to pick the top 10. Halfway through I realized that, as always, there are too many good releases to make easy choices. Continue reading »

Sep 282015
 

Wombbath-Downfall Rising

 

Well, some days around here (like last Friday), it’s a drought. But when it rains, it pours. Already today we’ve posted a two-part round-up of new music and videos by DGR (here and here), along with KevinP’s list of top albums released this month, including still more music streams (here). And I’ve found time this morning before leaving town again for my fucking day job to compile this additional collection of new streams (along with one doomy news item contributed by Grant Skelton).

I do worry that on days like this we’re subjecting readers to absolute sensory overload. But I obviously don’t worry too much about it… so here we go:

WOMBBATH

I’ve been singing the praises of the Wombbath’s new album Downfall Rising since hearing the first teaser from it, and now the entire album is out and available for streaming — so I’m posting the album stream as the first item in this round-up. Continue reading »

Jun 102015
 

 

Well, it was only yesterday that we posted a big feature about the first album from Sweden’s Wombbath in 22 years and a video teaser reel of song excerpts from the album — which is entitled Downfall Rising. And maybe we should have been a little more patient, because today an entire new song from the album hit YouTube — “Underneath Rotten Soil” — and you can hear it below.

As reported yesterday, the reincarnation of this long-missing cult band now consists of original guitarist Håkan Stuvemark (Skineater, ex-In Thy Dreams) plus vocalist/bassist Jonny Petterson (Ashcloud, Syn:drom, etc.), guitarist Al Riglin, and drummer Henrik Åberg — although Jeramie Kling (Infernaeon, The Absence) did the drumming on the new album and additional guitar parts on the record were contributed by Taylor Nordberg (Infernaeon). Continue reading »

Jun 092015
 

 

I have many musical weaknesses, but as I’ve confessed more than once, perhaps the most crippling one is old school Swedish death metal. I have something akin to a Pavlovian response when I hear HM-2 distortion in action; the saliva just starts flowing in a disgusting torrent. And so you may imagine how grossly I soiled myself when my friend Tito V. tipped me late yesterday to the fact that Wombbath were about to release a video teaser reel for their new album — Downfall Rising.

I’m not going to assume that everyone knows who Wombbath are, because hell, they haven’t released a new album since 1993 (Internal Caustic Torments) — and probably not many of you have yet heard the split they released with Warhound this past spring. But that 1993 album is a true classic (it was reissued earlier this year — more about that in a minute), and anything that comes out with the Wombbath name attached to it is going to be worth exploring. Continue reading »