Buried to Rise: 1990-1991 Discography

Review originally published at http://www.teethofthedivine.com by Erik Thomas


As most of you know, I’m a sucker for old school, Stockholm-styled Swedish death metal. And with the recent resurgence of the genre, I’ve very much enjoyed nostalgic acts like Axis Powers, Interment, Entrails, Fatalist, Brutally Deceased, Morbider and Evocation bringing back the glory. Not forgetting the slew of re-issues of previously undiscovered, obscure or hard to find gems that never quite made it to Entombed, Dismember and Grave levels of popularity.


For me the re-issue ball got rolling with Relapse’s 2002-reissue of God Macabre’s The Winterlong, followed by Necroharmonic’s re–release of Gorement’s discography and the more recent re-issues like Nirvana 2002 and the recently announced (long overdue) Uncanny discography from Dark Descent Records. It’s no wonder labels are reaching even deeper and deeper for new old, obscure and underground material. Dark Descent’s latest summoning is a compilation of material from Sweden’s Toxaemia; Buried to Rise: 1990-1991.


Formed in 1989, Toxaemia only released one formal record, the Beyond the Realm EP on Seraphic Decay Records in 1990. The rest of their output was in the form of two demos and Dark Descent has gathered it all in one two disc collection. The first disc sees all of the band’s material remastered by no other than Dan Swano. The second disc has the 18 tracks in their original state, so all of you purists can revel in some truly awful sounding analog tape masturbation.


Let me get this out of the way first. I’m not completely sure why Toxeamia never truly made it or why they broke up, but to be utterly blunt, I’m not sure they would have ever stacked up to their peers, anyway. And not just the popular ones, but the second tier ones that are now getting into the limelight with the reissues. I don’t mean that as a hard slam on the band, it’s just that other than the gritty, familiar, raw Stockholm rumble and buzz with rough vocals and far from tight musicianship, they just weren’t quite ‘there’ as an act. The songwriting, while undeniably Swedish and solid, never truly elevates to the level of anything more than a nice, primal sense of nostalgia. Albeit, it does get chronologically better through the course of the CD. Even if I had heard this in 1989-1991, especially in its original state, I would have probably been mildly impressed but returned promptly to their more famous brethren.


Swano’s re-mastering makes everything sound a bit fuller and clearer, though it’s still clearly lo-fi and demo quality (think the Convulse and Nirvana 2002 demos). Even the EP material, which is the bands most complete and competent collection of songs, is still not up to par with the recordings of that time. Yet, it’s hard for me not to appreciate the likes of “Beyond the Realm”, “Who Dies” and Acquisition” (arguably the band’s best songs) and the brief retro-synths of “World Graveyard”, “Tragedies Through Centuries” and fierce “Buried to Rot”. Even so, the majority of the songs don’t seem to have anything that would really grab you and cry ‘classic’ or paint the walls red with genre defining vigor. What you do get is 18 songs of earthy, enjoyable old school Swedish death metal…even though I can barely stand listening to the unmastered, original versions.


That all being said, however, for collectors and fans of the genre this is still a pretty nice, worthwhile reissue as it displays a lesser known side of classic Swedish death metal in all its unbridled, unpolished nostalgia.

Old school Swedish death metal pundits (myself included) have been spoiled in the past few years by a great number of compilations that gather out of print demos, EPs and albums into cohesive, single packages available at a reasonable fare. Seeing that almost all of this material is well out of print, it certainly beats mining online auctions for weeks on end, paying exorbitant prices for stuff that really few could ever care about. Supply and demand in action. Well, like the treatments given to Gorement, Crematory, Interment, or the early works of Evocation, Buried to Rise goes above and beyond to give you the full monty on the little known Toxaemia, a band that operated for only a few years to produce some truly grimy death metal, more of old school Entombed and Grave with a touch of Dutch bands like Pestilence and Asphyx.

These guys were not writing university textbooks here, just good old disgusting death metal with a lot more character than complexity. Both of the band's demos, Kaleidoscopic Lunacy (1990) and Buried to Rot (1991) are included, plus the Beyond the Realm EP (1990) and some loose bits. The kicker here is that they are all given to you twice, once in their original incarnation and then once again with a Dan Swanö remix/remaster disc. I'm going to have to go with the newer mix, if only because it manages to snare the original contrast of the dark, bludgeoning tones to a new height, and its simply more audible. But having both is quite the testament to authenticity, so curmudgeons and purists will have nothing to complain about. Prior to this, I'd only heard the songs on Beyond the Realm when I was researching obscure Swedish death, so the demos are new to me, but that material is pretty consistent in style, if a little less intense than "Beyond the Realm" or the grudging, grinding slugfest that is "Expired Christianity". "Another Lie, Another Death" has my favorite riff of them all, a winding and fuzzy melodic doom eclipsed by rugged death thrashing.

From a production standpoint, the Buried to Rot demo sounds the most balanced and potent, and this too features a few of the better songs, in the crushing "Tragedies Through Centuries" and title track, but I think the EP is the top choice. There are a few different versions of the track "Crematorium", of which the 1991 is clearly the better choice. Toxaemia were hardly innovators of their style, they simply took some brutal US influence, flavored it in a little of that home brewed, thick tone and wrote some crude yet effective material that would have been ripe for a mosh pit. But it's certainly authentic feeling, without the added burden of nostalgic intent. Nothing here would have qualified for a Left Hand Path, Indecent & Obscene or a You'll Never See..., but it does the trick if you're honing your ears into primal, morbid chaos. That it arrives with such a completeness is only a bonus. Own this, and you own all the pride and joy of a young band in several years of dark dedication.

-autothrall
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com