Dead Sun released seventh album by the Swedish mastermind Rogga Johansson, who played, have been playing or is playing in too many famous bands and projects to mention here. For sure one of the most prolific musicians in Swedish underground metal scene. This opus contains ten songs of full blooded Swedish death metal, quite a good mixture of old school Stockholm Swedish death, with Entombed, Dismember and Grave coming to mind, but there is also melody reminding me a bit of all those great Gothenburg melodic death metal bands, namely At The Gates and especially Edge of Sanity, whose work I love and respect so much. One of the songs that are highlights on this opus for me is for sure ‘Sand and Rot’ being melodic death metal lesson, with almost some gothic influenced drumming and structure and having that atmospheric parts with synths and flutes if I am not mistaken, or maybe it is only synth. The album as a whole is epic lesson in melodic death metal with heavy hitters like ‘Tid For Jakt’, one of the two songs sung in Swedish, then ‘Mausoleum Melodies’ and the title song. Melodic death metal is my favorite death metal subgenre, so I love this one. Go listen!
Dayal Patterson and his crew at Cult Never Dies are responsible for re-release of this expanded and renewed version of the book by dungeon synth/dark ambient godfather Mortiis. This interesting creature from Norway has his roots in black metal scene having played bass for Emperor in their early and decisive days of demos which later brought them to legends they are. Then he decided to go his own way and start his one man alter ego Mortiis which is so much more than mere music and project and this hard cover rich book is a best proof for that. This book contains rich illustrated poems and texts by Mortiis which explain his Era I as it is called, meaning his first opuses and later era with more songs and albums with vocals on, and less dungeon synth/dark ambient as in earlier opus. Illustrations are superb, courtesy of Mark Riddick, Juha Vuorma, David Thiérrée. Besides texts and poems, this book contains unreleased drawings and interviews with Mortiis(interviewed by Dayal himself, very interesting and extensive), interviews with all the illustrators, Proscriptor, Balrog, Forgotten Kingdoms, Chaucerian Myth and more. This is worth having and reading, I will get back to it every once in a while and read some parts again. Great release indeed.
KRAYKULLA-WEBZINE 