Inferno

What I love most about Entombed is that they clearly do not give a fuck about you or anyone else. They don't care that you haven't dug them since Clandestine or wish they'd remained forever Nihilist. That's your fuckin' problem. They just want to go out, crank their amps, and play out their ugly/gnarly mesh of hardcore, punk, thrash, death, and sludge -- a sound that has tidily become known as 'death'n'roll,' a misnomer if ever I've heard one. For while Entombed offer a certain rock'n'roll swagger, a balls-out one-finger salute of unrepentant attitude akin to a twice-heavy AC/DC stomping your fingers as you put your hand on the stage, they have never been a bunch of FM-friendly stadium packers. They are an underground metal band all the way. Having shed over 50% of their pure death trappings, they've never entirely forgotten their roots either, paying homage to their adolescent selves while forging ahead as a group of hard-drinking adults who want to compress your vertebrae with their caustic metal stew. That's what Inferno does. It kicks your ass; a perfect example of the true Entombed: angry as hell, heavy as fuck, alternating between a variety of old-school metal loves like a drunken hesher thumbing quarters into a jukebox that contains only Black Sabbath, Venom, Motorhead, Autopsy, and Slayer.

The classic Entombed buzzsaw guitar tone is prominent here, boldly enlivened by a nice round bass sound that rudely pushes past the guitars to bludgeon itself across your forehead. The drums swing super rich, laying down loose grooves and thumping reminders of a primitive time when men like Lars Göran Petrov roamed the heath looking to club any interlopers. No longer straightened by death metal's limitations, Lars allows his voice to pitch in a variety of directions, from death grunt to hoarse shout to slightly tipsy singing -- a full range of powerful voicings that fully demonstrate his abilities as a brute vocalist. And Entombed is brute music. Inferno peels back the cleaned up sounds of Morning Star, a solid record perhaps a touch too polished and gussied up. I liked it but it didn't have that grimy dive-bar vomitorium sound that I admired so much on Uprising and Wolverine Blues. This record has it though, that down-in-the-mouth sound, like you have to shower the squalor off afterward.

The songwriting is uniformly excellent too, particularly if you factor in the Averno bonus tracks. "Retaliation" opens the album with a slow forced march funeral parade of pounding drums, fuzzed out guitars squealing in white noise agony, and Lars yelling out his indignation from deep within the diaphragm. A classic headbanger, "Retaliation" is a foretaste of things to come. And if you can't get into this track then you might as well forget about the rest of it -- Entombed isn't for you (and really, if that's true, then metal isn't really for you either). "The Fix Is In" is pummeling pit fuel with a great chorus, 'Heretic at the stake. Let the motherfucker bake!' "Incinerator" hits Clandestine-ish notes of Swedish death with two-step thrash beats, alternating double-bass, and creepy dark melodic guitar runs. There's the cheeky parody of "Flexing Muscles" with its openly mocking lyrics (and equally mocking thuggish breakdowns) and the tongue-in-cheek "That's When I Became A Satanist," songs unafraid to inject a little humor into an otherwise over-serious genre. My favorite tracks however are to be found on the Averno bonus disc: "When Humanities Gone" and "There Are Horrors Of 1000 Nightmares" both hit that perfect crusty note of classic Entombed: dark riffage crashing over propulsive thrash beats with the occasional tidal groove. Entombed seem to often save their best tracks for their EPs and these two are no exception. There are a few tracks here I don't favor but nothing I'd actively skip. Like its predecessor Uprising, Inferno is a front-to-back solid listen and ties that record as my favorite Entombed record of the last decade.

The 8th full-length from Entombed sees the band strike out on a plateau after their surprisingly great Morning Star. Inferno is a moody album which falls between that and Uprising. A grimy tone permeates this recording like a thick, toxic membrane, a riotous unrest ready to erupt at any second. The band brings back their rock, punk and hardcore influences here a little more than the previous album, and they've continued to write some clever lyrics here while emphasizing their conceptual bridge between social relevance and a spot or two of good old fashioned blasphemy. In all, it's a strong effort, with a long track list (13 songs plus a few more if you've got the Candlelight release with the bonus Averno disc), though on a few, brief occasions it does flirt with mediocrity.

The first track "Retaliation" is a slow if effective march which functions purely on the immense, cold crunch of its guitars, like an war party of neanderthals stalking a torchlit night out of desperation to find some shelter. The track gets pretty fuzzy and atmospheric in its closing climes, as it catapults into the churning two-fisted slugger "The Fix is In", a thick slice of hardcore punk which simmers in the juices of its wailing guitars and dour mood, with more of the band's entertaining, pseudo-Satanic lyrics, of which my favorite line was the repetition of "Heretic at the stake/Let the motherfucker bake" in the bridge. "Incinerator" is a choppy, mud-spattered thrasher which rekindles a bit of that Slayer influence the band ever been high off, with a great energy and some killer lyrics:

'Children of black coffins
Awaiting to be sincerely torn
Bones are crushed by machinery
Their dust will be spread by the storm'

"Children of the Underworld" follows, one of the best tracks on the album, a dire and slowly flowing roast of regrets and sorrow, guitar atmospherics fluttering about the gray winds of force the central rhythm emits, and an excellent breakdown with a massive chuggernaut riff that is almost impossible not to slowly worship with a steady, subtle nodding of the skull. "That's When I Became a Satanist" rips out more of the thrash breaks, with a grooving hardcore thrust and more of the band's dark sense of humor inherent in the lyrics. The chorus to this is a total dark punk headbanger. The quirky titled "Nobodaddy" celebrates good old fashion family values with a big, splashing groove that cedes to subtle mute picked rhythms that swerve with the bass to the inevitable climax. Another of the best on the album, followed by a catchy 2 minute piano "Intermission" which may remind you of how "DCLXVI" was used on To Ride, Shoot Straight and Speak the Truth, only this is better.

With the exception of maybe the more pronounced vocals, "Young & Dead" is a pretty close facsimile to the material of the first two albums, with steadily grinding guitars that storm ever forward, here layered in a few keyboard strikes to create a pretty horrific atmosphere. The breakdown in this one is all gloom and doom, like drowning yourself in tar. "Descent Into Inferno" breeds some nice, slow grooves with tremulous guitar effects in the verse, sliding across the land like a serpent bloated on lust and lies. However, I found the latter half of the track somewhat lackluster, in particular the slow crushing stoner grooves which conjured nothing but apathy. "Public Burning" is another of the band's socially charged anthems towards castigation of the oppressor, with some half decent, if forgettable punk riffs that morph into a grooving rockslide.

Which leads us into the twilight minutes of Inferno, beginning with the bouncing, carnal gait that chugs under "Flexing Muscles", an indictment of our far too image conscious Western civilization, kind of an attempt to trim the fat out the shallower end of masculinity, like Fight Club only more metal. I dig the fuzzy moldering of the guitars in the bridge, but the breakdown leaves a little to be desired. "Skeleton of Steel" is a slow, petulant thrasher which is suitable for a calm and controlled moshing, a cute little Slayer-like rhythm woven between its more brutal verses. "Night for Day" is the finale of the core album, a great track which recalls "Chief Rebel Angel" but truly crushing and depressing, making good use of atmospheric elements like a tolling belltower and subtle sweep of orchestration. This is another of Inferno's best, and I found it interesting as the following album Serpent Saints would go this route often with tracks like "When in Sodom".

If you have access to the edition with the bonus Averno disc, then I'd truly recommend you splurge on this instead of just the single CD, since it has some worthwhile non-album cuts. "When Humanity's Gone" is a burning, rollicking old school Entombed death metal track with a sludgy bridge, followed by the more hardcore infused "There Are Horrors of 1000 Nightmares". The chuggy "Random Guitar" is possibly the strongest track on the bonus EP, with a fun feel to its, some edge harmonic riffs and a solid groove. After these, there are 'video edit' version of the band's cover of Stillborn's "Albino Flogged in Black" and "Retaliation" from this very album. Neither could be considered important, unless you haven't heard the cover, and there are also videos included here for both of these.

Inferno is certainly a strong value, and belongs as a check in the positive category when examining the peaks and valleys the seminal Swedish outfit's roller coaster career. The majority of the tracks are great, even if they may feel a little more subdued than the previous album. The dark tone in general of this effort is very much appreciated, adding a cohesion to its many tracks and the ominous implications of its lyrical matter. I could definitely skip out on "Public Burning", and parts of "Flexing Muscles" or "Descent Into Inferno" and feel like I've lost nothing, but that's not a bad price to pay when you consider the quality of the difference left over. This is of course a stopgap between two better albums, but there are numerous tracks to which I return often.

Highlights: Children of the Underworld, Nobodaddy, Young & Dead, Night for Day

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After a mid period of not as excellent music, Entombed returned in 2001 with a mammoth release in 'Morning Star' and they follow up with an album that just as strong, 'Inferno'. Inferno is a blend of everything Entombed as done over the years, it has the evil and often humerous satantic themes, dark Death Rock/Hardcore with a Death Metal aesthetic, that's totally fun as well as brutal and ass kicking. So where Morning Star was more serious and brutal, Inferno is more fun, while still retaining that evil edge that Morning Star had.

Musically, you see all of Entombeds' styles here. Their old thrashy death stuff, their Death'n'Roll, their hardcore stuff and the pulsing Satantic metal from recent years. It sounds like this all wouldn't sound right together, but the production/mix keeps it all together. The usual Entombed guitar tone is here, but it's not as loud and font in the mix as it usually is. It sounds neater than what is usual, but still mean and heavy and doesn't give that ear fatigue that most Entombed albums give due to the enourmously loud tone. Unlike the guitar tone, the vocals are as always, front and center so as L.G. Petrov's blend of humor and Satanism can be heard and understood. He really has a unique voice and always sounds so convincing no matter how off base the lyrics may be, case in point the song 'Flexing Muscles' which is about a bodybuilder with a narcissisit complex. The lyrics are silly, but the way Petrov sings them, they sound feroucious and evil. The drumming on this album is awesome. Don't let anyone tell you Entombed became lost after the depature of Nicke Andersson, as his replacement hauls ass on the kit.

Song wise, this album is flawless. There is not one bad or out of place song. Yes, EVERY song on this is great, even the haunting piano interlude of 'Intermission'. That's a main ingredient for this albums atmosphere, the piano, such as in the final track 'Night for Day', you hear an old western piano like you'd hear in reels for old films in the 20's. This album really hits everywhere. It's Menacing, haunting, heavy, evil, fast and even humerous at times. Inferno is a showcase of the legend that is Entombed. Everything that makes them wonderful is showcased on this album at one point or another. Awesome.

Recomended Listening: 'The Fix Is In', 'That's When I Became A Satanist', 'Young and Dead', 'Flexing Muscles'