Crawling in Vomits

Before exploring and redefining the confines of romantic doom/death and gothic/psychedelic metal (and then eventually settling in for very fun if silly goth rock), famous Tiamat leader Johan Edlund (once known as Hellslaughter) contributed to the nascent Scandinavian death and black metal underground movement together with a slightly different assembly of musicians: most of this material (definitely more primitive compared to works like, say, "The Astral Sleep" or "Clouds" - let alone "Wildhoney") was released under the name of Treblinka. Along with Merciless, Obscurity, Morbid, Mefisto, Nihilist and Grotesque, Treblinka stood amongst the darkest of the dark, the rawest of the raw, the truest of the true, the kvltest of the kvlt within the small Swedish metal scene of the late 80's, before the whole Sunlight death metal boom of 1990 and beyond. Clearly not a musical territory your average Entombed dork would usually want to step into.

"Crawling in Vomits" is Treblinka's first demo, and in my opinion is also their best. Many underground metal freaks tend to prefer their following releases (along with Tiamat's debut "Sumerian Cry", which is pretty much the culmination of this musical route), but I beg to differ: this demo is definitely something much more special and unique. It's definitely their rawest, most primitive release, and also their least "serious", "evil-sounding" one ("The Sign of the Pentagram" and "Severe Abominations" do already bear a much darker, muddier, more typically "Swedish" sound compared to this) - and yet, in a kind of similar way to how "The Fart That Should Not Be" pertains to Old Funeral recordings, I feel like this demo does possess some truly overlooked qualities which tend to capture my interest much more. The four songs on "Crawling in Vomits" may not have any slow, gloomy middle section in the vein of "Nocturnal Funeral" or "Severe Abomination", nor the Merciless-like razor-sharp riffing of "Evilized", but they tend to be much more consistently memorable and packed with notable ideas compared to the band's next releases - which, while darker and more occult-laden, are also a bit more streamlined and less interesting songwriting-wise, generally indulging in more standard, typical riff patterns.

Speaking of riffing: this is "Crawling in Vomits"'s secret ingredient. Riffs are mostly of the proto-death metal tremolo variety (I'd say, already kind of forward-thinking for their time, similar to Nuclear Death's first demo), and are definitely more sinuous, delicate, fluid-sounding and creative compared to those of subsequent releases, interweaving in more adventurous, overall much stronger compositions from start to finish. They are played in E standard (I'll admit, a tuning I've always had a certain bias toward) and are interspersed with some slower, choppier, heavy/thrash-informed sections (often used as intros/outros) the band would later reduce the use of. But the memorability of these riffs resides in one key factor: and that is, how amusing they sound. There's a peculiar kind of ironic, absurdist feel to many of these riffs and how they are connected with each other, which can be perceived most clearly from the twisted tremolos of the title-track (go figure, my favorite track on here) and, to a slightly minor degree, "Cadaverous Odour". Really, if you dropped the tremolo picking altogether and just started chord-strumming your way through these riffs, you'd find yourself with some legit, 100% believable old school punk tunes: the melodies would fit the genre perfectly, even moreso than actual death/black metal. It feels as if, through these sardonic riffs, the band is poking fun at you for being grossed out by all the awful death, gore, rot and vomit being spewed straight in your face by means of this loud, distorted, sloppy mayhem. I mean, the intro of "Earwigs in Your Veins" is just straight-up 70's hard rock, with all those sleazy phrases and hilarious bluesy solos. Some slightly more darkened vibes are evoked on the intro of "Hail to Cruelty", but it's just a fraction of what Treblinka would later do.

This demo almost feels like a parody or a deconstructive art piece, but in reality, it's just an unforgettable relic from the underground's formative years, a time when extreme metal wasn't yet as carefully mapped out and codified, and bands didn't have to take themselves so damn seriously in order to be accepted. The last song ends with the sounds of a guy puking his guts out, just sayin'. This may not be the greatest death metal demo from the 80's (there are at least a couple of Death demos which blow this out of the water), but it's among the vilest, grossest, most fun and unique ones for sure. I often feel the need to revisit it, enjoying it a tad more than any other Treblinka/Tiamat release prior to "Clouds". And yeah, that includes "Sumerian Cry" too.

I recently discovered this group, that is nothing else than the pre-Tiamat band. At the time they were more a black metal band than death but we must say that obviously we cannot consider this black metal as Marduk one for example. This is a blackened form of extreme metal that back in the 80s were influenced by groups like early Darkthrone, Celtic Frost or Hellhammer with always an eye to the classical thrash.

Anyway the main riff on the title track is very black oriented with blackened scream vocals. The doomish passages are followed by thrash mid tempos in an atmosphere of pure black mass. The riff on “Earwigs On Your Vein” is pure Black Sabbath with a different approach. Also the production is clear and the guitars not distorted at all, but they are something kinda metallic and doomish. The up tempos are really primordial.

Great the down tempos in “Hail To Cruelty” followed by evil, fast ones. It’s something fun the guitar riffage for the immature but sincere attitude and skill. Anyway pretty good stuff here that must be seen through the eyes of the young members and the year of creation. The final “Cadaverous Odour” is a bit different and shows a more brutal attack and black riffs that sometimes reminded me early Sarcofago.

Primordial but very good and I like these things!!

Now, this was a surprise! I didn't really know what to expect from Treblinka, since all I knew is that they now play a much more melodic style as Tiamat, but this demo really impressed me!
First and foremost, this is your not typical Black Metal demo, in many ways. The band's playing is not that fast, and although the tremolo picking is there most of the time, there are no blastbeats: rather, the drumming is often based on a double-tempo feel with the snare on the beat, which provides a solid backbone to the music. I also have noticed the absence of double bass drumming; it might be because the drums aren't given that high volume but still it would have been perceivable it if were really there... oh well.
Another interesting fact about "Crawling In Vomits" is the sound, which is a lot more clear than most demos of that time (this was released around 1988). It has a good amount of low end, allowing the bass to be heard rather clearly, and the vocals, although given an audible reverb, don't echo all over the place, and as I said, the drums don't overpower the rest. The guitars have also a nice tone, far from the notorious buzzing, treble-saturated static that plagues most underground recordings; rather, the overall sound of the tape comes across as a bit lifeless and flat, but you won't be experiencing headaches to grasp what's going on. Which is a very good thing, because there is interesting stuff going on here.

The demo opens with the title track, "Crawling in Vomits"... as cheesy as it gets, no doubt about it, but the riffs that came out of my speakers quickly silenced such uncertainties in my mind. Treblinka's songs on this demo have a pretty standard structure, which this song introduces us as it developes: it starts with a rather slow intro (backed by cool bass licks), but the pace soon pick ups and we clearly recognize a verse-chorus-verse-chorus pattern. As hinted above, the riffs are interesting and memorable, although a bit more variety would be welcomed as most of the time the guitar(s) (there could be two but you can't really tell) and the bass just play the very sae notes altogether. In the middle of the song we find a Thrash-styled break (think about the "Pumped with fluid, inside your brain" part in Slayer's "Angel of Death", although obviously less frantic) with some nice drum tricks going on, before getting back to the verse-chorus sequence for one last time and back to the intro riff which finishes the song. This is pretty much what we can expect from the rest of the songs on here, but each one of them has enough personality to be recognized.
For example, the following track, the first version of "Earwings in Your Veins", has a very peculiar opening ("Blackened NWOBHM"?) with nice guitar lines going on; it then goes off once again in the pounding verse-chorus fast part: the chorus here has an interesting structure, with an unusual rhythm and tonality structure that sets it apart from the other songs. The Thrash break in the middle is one of the best of the demo - yes it might be a bit juvenile, but who cares as long as it's cool? The song then goes back into the verse and one lat chorus, before finishing on the intro riff once more.

"Hail to Cruely" has a very slow and almost Doomish beginning, but soon proves the most frantic number riff-wise; it seems that the band members are forced to build riffs on the moment just to keep up with the rhythm (which, as I said, is not that fast, but this is the feeling you get). The middle break in the song almost sounds lifted from "Endless Pain"-era Kreator, and there's also a couple of solos thrown in, probably to enhance the Slayer-like impression, but both fall short due to a not so competent performance. The song finishes in a different way that the others, meaning that we don't get the intro riff again at the end... after the last verse-chorus spin which follows the middle section, we get another brief Trhashy break (different from the previous one) and the song closes with one last chorus. Good job.
The final track, "Cadaverous Odour" (no, I won't comment the titles anymore), begins right away with a Thrashy mid-tempo, which of course soon becomes another fast verse followed by another fast chorus and back again... the middle section, however, is different from the rest, as the band switches to a ternary tempo; the drumming here gets a bit sloppy at times (think "Carpathian Wolves"-style Graveland), but it's not that bad. There's also another unexpected Thrash break right at the end (after the last verse-chorus round), which is not bad at all. What is bad is that after the song ends you get almost a minute of random puking noises, probably placed there by the band to enhance the feeling of the demo's title... it's kinda scary to think if one of the members was forced to do this just for the demo...

All in all, depsite the somewhat formula-based song structures (which however doesn't stop the individual songs to have their own identity), this is a very solid first effort. Recommended to any Tiamat fans willing to discover what the band's roots are, and to anyone who likes raw but interesting Metal.