Dismembered

"Dismembered" was the first (official) demo from Swedish death metal legends Dismember. The band's stature within the wider metal scene means that this demo has wider recognition than most debut death metal demos. There is nothing special about it though, and it contains little to recommend it. There are three songs, two of which ("Deathevokation" and "Defective Decay") would be re-recorded and appended to the CD version of "Like an Everflowing Stream" (the former also appeared on the Carnage album). The remaining song, "Substantially Dead", only appears on this demo.

The songs are good. The problem is the amateurish execution. This demo is a world away from the band's debut album. The improvements in musicianship after this demo are striking. Fred Estby's drumming here is basic and limited. I think he was new to the drums when this demo came out. It shows. He has none of the touch and fluidity that his later performances exude. The vocals of Robert Sennebäck are notable because they sound wild and extreme. However, these high-pitched yelps don't sound good. Like Estby, Sennebäck would improve his technique in time for the next Dismember studio demo ("Last Blasphemies").

The production isn't bad when considering that this is a debut death metal demo from 1988. It is clear and crisp enough but it lacks the bass-heavy density of the "Last Blasphemies" and "Reborn in Blasphemy" demos (particularly the latter). The combination of crude musicianship and crude production could have made for a fun piece of death metal. I’m sure people enjoyed this at the time but it has been rendered obsolete by what happened next. Dismember improved with astonishing speed in the years that followed, becoming one of the best death metal bands in the world.

"Dismembered" is worse than I remember it being when I last heard it. The band members were young when they recorded this. You can hear the potential, but this demo is more of a history lesson than anything else.

Technically the second demo they ever released, Dismember has a lot left to still to prove with "Dismembered". But other than the bands historical significance, there really isn't much to this demo that is this remarkable. It's an early demo and it absolutely sounds like a still young bands early demo.

While I wouldn't really recommend going into this demo unless you were really interested in the roots of the swedish band, it still has good qualities to it. Perhaps its strongest quality being surprisingly the songs. They are structurally fairly simple, but Dismember has never been known for having overly complex songs. They're quite simple on the demo here and they've been on most other of their releases ever since, and neither do they stick out too much (apart from maybe being a bit closer to death n' roll than traditional swedish death metal like they're known for). They sound like the rest of their material of that era of the band, proven by the fact that 2 of 3 songs on this demo ended up as bonus tracks on "Like an everflowing stream" and they absolutely deserved to be featured there. Other than that, the band's performance is okay. There are a few hiccups here and there but the ideas they had musically for the most part were also executed fairly well, namely the atmosphere even being a bit sinister.

But the problem is it sort of ends there. Just about everything else about it drags my opinion of it down for me. I mentioned the songs here are pretty good and can live up to even their later more classic material. But even though the songs are good, they are dragged down the well in this demo for 2 main reasons, the goddamn production and the vocals. Yes, this is a demo, and thus, it was likely released to show the world what they were capable of musically and compositionally, not the sound they would later become somewhat infamous for (the classic Boss HM-2 with basically everything cranked to max). But my god it sounds awful. A lot of early and rough sounding demos at the very least have a charm to it that makes it somewhat enjoyable, but i barely get any of that here. The bit of charm the demo has is ruined by the vocals. They are hard to describe. They're high-pitched, closer to even black metal really, but not even close to good for death metal, making for a sure unique, but even an annoying experience, that drains this demo from the little life it could have had.

In short It is an early demo and it shows. The production is weak and the vocals make no sense to even exist here, and combined they manage to bring this demo into the category of who cares for dismember. If you want early Dismember, listen to Last Blasphemies or Reborn in Blasphemy. This one may as well be just seen as an early Dismember demo and nothing much else.

This is Dismember's debut demo from 1988, but I always considered it and "Last Blasphemies" to be the first material from Carnage. Most of the songs from these early days were later re-recorded for the "Dark Recollections" album in 1990. The Dismember that we all know today didn't really begin until after that recording, but that's a debate for another day.

Somebody recently described this tape as being more along the lines of black metal, but I wouldn't necessarily agree with that. The only common element this stuff really shares with that genre is the over-the-top, screaming vocals that were recorded through a poor delay processor. I guess you can say the drumming is very "black metal" too because it's extremely sloppy and sounds like shit! However, the guitars and arrangements sound no different from those on the other demos or "Dark Recollections". This is still death metal and nothing less.

The production actually isn't too bad considering the year this came out. It's got a very dark, malignant vibe to it and the volume levels are a bit low, but otherwise it's reasonably clear. I've heard sophomore demo efforts from 1993 that sounded 10 times worse than this. Matti Kärki didn't sing on this tape, and as I already pointed out the vocals sound pretty horrible. The drumming is just as sloppy, and during the faster sections of the songs it sounds like the drummer is tripping over his own beats.

There are three songs on the tape. "Death Evocation" is a mid-tempo track and of course an early version of the Carnage classic. The notable difference on this recording is the lack of keyboards in the beginning part and the different arrangement of the final guitar solo. The double bass section at the very end of the song sounds fucking terrible... Next up is "Substantially Dead", which is my favorite on the demo. It's much faster and has a dark, thrashy vibe to it. As UltraBoris pointed out in his review, the main chorus riff is totally killer. The way the vocalist sings it reminds me of the chorus of "Torn to Pieces" on Death's debut LP. The last track is an early version of "Defective Decay" which would later re-appear on their 3rd demo and "Skin Her Alive" EP. The structure is basically the same as on the newer versions, except that the half-blastbeats during the beginning and final sections sound much weaker.

Aside from "Substantially Dead", this demo is kind of worthless. The other two songs were later re-recorded in much better versions on future releases, and the vocals and drumming is some of the worst I've ever heard from a Swedish death metal band. Only for die hard Dismember collectors.