Sorcery - Blood Chilling Tales (1991)

Grab your crucifix, things are gonna get scary. On first view of the shoddy album artwork I thought this might be some dungeons n' dragons style metal, but how wrong was I.This is pretty brutal formulaic old school death metal with a deep, guttural vocal assault, and distinctive buzzing riffs. I must admit to having never heard of these Swedish deathsters before, but this is pretty good stuff, particularly those vocals which seem comfortable to switch between gnarly bellow and demonic rasp. It's still pretty much no thrills stuff but tinged with a few atmospherics, particularly on 'By These Words' with its Hammer Horror style outro. I guess the closest band I could compare them to would be Unleashed, and that's no bad thing. The track 'Death' begins with a swampy riff and horrifying yelp, as we descned into further downtuned madness and those crushing drums. The pace is soon quickened, as it does with most of the tracks on offer. Fans of the like of Entombed and Carnage will find much flesh to savour here,Nygren and Karlsson-Mard's guitars are extremely potent, delivered in bleak fashion and I'm wondering why these guys didn't get popular when the Swedish death metal scene blossomed. I'm loving te more mid-tempo atrocities such as 'Dragons Of The Burning Twilight' with Malmstrom's witchy vocals - but sadly this was the bands only release, maybe doomed forever by that amateurish artwork. Even so, this record lives up to its seemingly cheesy title. All hail Swedish sorcery! 7/10