Brutal

- This is the follow up to Clandestine...

- But hold on...

- What's that? Chaosbreed you say? No this is Entombed...

- No this is Finnish...

- What? But it certainly sounds exactly like Left Hand Path and Clandestine.

Yeah OK enough with the stupid dialogue, you get the point. Chaosbreed have one influence and that is early Entombed. Early Entombed was great, anyone who says otherwise are wrong, plain and simple. So if Chaosbreed is a complete clone of Entombed, what do we get? Well we get quality old school death metal. Sure it is nothing original but that does not bother me (even if it would lift the score), but it sounds good. You probably expect chainsaw guitar riffs, tempo ranging from slow and lumbering to fast and intense, raspy vocals and so on and you get pretty much that, no surprises. Is that bad? I think not, Entombed showed us 500 years ago that all of that make for kick ass metal and this is no talentless bunch of guys playing. They know what they are doing and it came out the way it was supposed to, a solid old school death metal release.

If you have heard Clandestine you have heard this, if you like Clandestine you like this. If you have not heard Clandestine you (well first of all you have to come out from under the rock you are living under) will get a barrage of ultra fat guitar riffs that are sure to satisfy any old school fan, you will also get a fair share of solos and they do not disappoint. Very headbangable stuff quite simply. If I were to mention the bass briefly, there is not much to say. If you concentrate you can pick it out but overall it does its job to add heaviness to it all.

The vocals are as mentioned raspy and throaty, just like most other Swedish bands. The vocalist has a fairly varied style, it is not too flat. Someone once said "why doesn't vocalist do any cool sounds anymore?" (you know, screams and such, kinda like "Uahhh!"), those things are always fun and the vocalist here are not afraid to throw in one or two occasionally. Moving on to the lyrics, some are quite funny actually, just look at this:

"I am the monkey on your back
The boogieman under your bed
The skeleton in your closet,
Incubus in your dreams"

Otherwise it is not much more to say about them.

I give this album 80, which is a good score. The only apparent flaw here is the total absence of originality. I seriously doubt the intention was to create something of their own, but rather to make something that could hold up against albums like Clandestine and Indecent And Obscene. It could, if it was not for the fact it was released 10 years later, which makes it more of a copy of the mentioned albums.

You know how swedish old school seems to be popping out now, more than ever...this is insane. While bands like Paganizer, Dismember and Unleashed keep doing what they have doing for years. We get comeback albums from Grave (not very good ones though). And we also have this special little area of new swedish old school bands...everyone knows (and hates) Bloodbath, Ribspreader and now we get Chaosbreed. One could argue that this album came out on the wrong moment. Trust me , if this had been on 1991, this album will possibly be considered a masterpiece, even though the obvious Entombed influences are always peresent, but fuck Dismember had those ones too...and we all know they are NOT Entombed clones. So what can be said about Chaosbreed.

I think what impresses me the most about the album is the drumming, fill with rolls, even though it has his generic parts, i think it can be resumed in one word...diverse. The guitars well, they have nice leads and solos, and the quitar tone, is the Entombed tone hehe. My main complain on this album, is the vocals. I've never liked Janeli Tarva on Sentenced's Amok, even though i consider the album to be one of Sentenced's best albums. Lirically, the band gives the middle finger to everything evil about this music. That seriousness and fucked up imagery that we had with thoses old school swedish albums is lost. That, i think its something new, but Finnish bands have this tendency to joke and fuck around, while being drunk...so i think its something expectable from this band. Standout tracks for me have to be Demon Skunk, with its doomish approach. Casket Ride, i also a great slab of mid paced Death Metal. In general this album, is a great addition to a metalheads collection, as long as you have the time and mood to listen to it.

WHAT? HUH? REVIEW? WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? WHAT? TAOSHEED? WHAT THE HELL...OH! YOU'RE DEAF TOO AFTER HEARING 'ROTTING ALIVE', HUH? YEAH. WHAT A PAIN IN THE ASS!

Ok, how many metal heads have experienced this before? You see promising artwork on the cover. You see a kick ass name. You think, "what the hell..." and pay the sixteen or more dollars (not including tax) for the CD. You then put it in your CD player expecting results for your money. You then want to take said CD out and snap it into millions of tiny pieces, set it on fire, do a tribal hate dance, then piss upon the smoldering ashes. Yeah, it's sort of like that again.

The high ticket price aside, the album has it's ups. It also has many downs. A simple look on the back can tell you what you are getting into here. Song titles like 'An Evil Eye' and 'F/C/D/C' should tell you to shy away. But notice a certain song called 'Demon Skunk'. Uh oh. Suddenly that three or four hours of work seem so futile now.

It's not all that bad. Brutal isn't really as bad as it's album name depicts. The music is actually pretty good, except for a few songs here and there where it get's really slow and really boring fast. And, somehow, even with very few lyrics, the band manages to pull off a few solos through one song and make it last four to five minutes. And the high pitch, damn near deafening guitar squeel at the start of track five is a wake up call, and a sign that you might not be able to hear the rest of the album perfectly.

The vocals aren't the traditional death metal gutteral screams. It's alright though. It gives the album more of an insane feel to it, fitting in perfectly with what the albums topics are about. The only problem is sometimes he tries to hit certain notes or hold a note for a while and fail to succeed.

The lyrics are infact Brutal...if you are a twelve year old who doesn't really know better. Naming various venereal diseases over and over again and singing about how if you take a whiff of this demon skunk thing your head will melt away and you'll love it somehow doesn't lead the pack with intelligence. However...a demon skunk...that's worth points on the creativity scale.

The production quality is great, and the guest keyboardist in the album definately adds to the mix. But, this one is definately a release you should check out first before you rush out and spend so much hard earned money on. Pure and simple.

Talk about a clone. Not only is Chaosbreed named after an Entombed song, they also sound pretty much identical to the band; the only differences being the vocals aren't nearly as good and, well, this album has been done before... by Entombed and Dismember.

Complete cloneage aside, this album really isn't bad. I mean, it's nothing new, but oldschool melodic swedish deathmetal is great, so a return to the style of old Entombed is something I welcome, considering Entombed sounds like they should be touring with Slipknot nowadays.

The guitarwork and drumming on Brutal are both pretty good, and the songs are fairly interesting with a lot of good thrashy/chugging breaks. Like I said, just imagine Entombed's Clandestine as about 70 percent of how good it actually is, and you get Brutal.

The album really had be through the first two songs (and really, it kept me interested throughout), as Casket Ride really is a highlight of the album. However, once track 3, Faces of Death, came around, I was taken aback. This song was great the first time I heard it, when it was released by Slayer as South of Heaven. Basically all Chaosbreed did here is slightly change the chord progression and change the lyrics; EXACTLY like South of Heaven, Faces of Death builds up to a set of majestic riffing then breaking down into chugging thrash. Not only was I taken aback by this blatant ripoff, I was laughing my ass off throughout the entire song. It actually kind of ruined the album for me, which is why I didn't give it the greatest rating. The album picks up after Faces of Death and continues to be a pretty solid effort, but that horrific lack of creativity/uniqueness just destroyed the whole atmosphere for me.

I hate Bloodbath, fucken hate them. Blowpeth and Katatonia are the last fucken bands on earth that need to join up and make a throwback band to old-school Swedish Death Metal. That's like Dimmu Borgir and Cradle of Filth joining forces to make a throwback band to old-school Black Metal in the vain of Bathory and Mayhem. Just ain't workin'.

A band that does manage to pay tribute to Swedish Death bands like Grave and Entombed are a group of crazy fucks from Finland called Chaosbreed. Named after an Entombed song, so you already know it's going to be good!

Chaosbreed started out in 03 with a bunch of ex-bandmembers from various metal bands and they got together to make death metal how it's supposed to be made. This album absofuckenlutely kills. When I popped this in it almost felt like Entombed stopped doing their little "Death N' Roll" thing and returned to what got so many people into them, classic Swedish Death Metal. They've got that very familiar and killer guitar tone down, the drums are tight, and the vocals fit the style perfectly. Taneli could replace L-G in Entombed anyfuckentime!

This album, from start to finish, doesn't let down. The album starts off with "Wretched Life" which immediately shows you that Entombed really dominates their influences. Nice, fast, headbanging song which flows right into "Casket Ride" and you find yourself in another excellent song. That's pretty much the whole thing with this album. Every song flows into the next one, and it all sounds like how it's supposed to; like old-school Swedish Death Metal. And in my opinion, DM doesn't really get any better than that.

I'm not saying that this is a classic like Grave's "Soulless" or Entombed's"Clandestine" but it's really a nice change to go back to that 90's sound in a time where bands feel the need to experiment with other styles. Bottom line, this album is fucken good and you should pick it up right fucken now.