BLOODBATH

The Fathomless Mastery

Century Media/ CD

It took them almost four years to come up with a new material. Are you surprised? You shouldn't be. It's not an easy thing to run a regular project consisted of such busy and hard-working musicians. It causes many problems, evokes many complications, sometimes just forces to make some line up changes. That's why BLOODBATH parted ways (temporarily) with Peter Tägtgren and Dan Swanö (due to their other obligations I guess) some time ago. But every cloud has a silver lining. Peter was replaced by OPETH's mainman Mikael Åkerfeldt (who rejoined the band after several years). Per "Sodomizer" Eriksson from 21 LUCIFERS (and some other poorly known acts) took over second guitar duties. In that line up BLOODBATH entered Ghost Ward Studio (actually, drum parts were tracked at Park Studio) to record probably their best album to date.

So far the band has been combining Swedish and American death metal influences in a pretty democratic way. The new album can also be defined as a smooth mix of both sub-genres, although BLOODBATH Anno Satani 2008 seems to be much more Florida- inspired than ever before. I would even say, that „The Fatholmess Mastery” in at least 60 percent was written under a great influence of MORBID ANGEL's classics. We have here songs like "At The Behest Of Their Death" sounding like a medley of "Immortal Rites" and "Day of Suffering", there's "Mock The Cross" based on riffs stolen directly from "Where The Slime Live", or "Wretched Human Mirror " which in some points could be entitled as " Blood On My Hands pt. II.". The same is for Michael vocals. His gruntling screaming on „The Fathomless Mastery” sounds almost like... missing tracks from "Domination" recording session. Demonic vocals, punishing beats and direct riffing provide a solid foundation for leading melody lines, delivered in a typical Swedish oldschool way. Unlike MORBID ANGEL, BLOODBATH manage to keep things pretty simple (there's actually one exception, I mean "Ieosus' following the direction of bizarre, neck-wrecking riffs and syncopic rhythms known from MESHUGGAH), without loosing the intensity and brutality (still main components of their music style). No doubt, „The Fathomless Mastery” is a great piece of death metal at its best, quite unoriginal but very cool to listen to. The guys had a great time while recording it. It's our pleasure.

10/12