Album Review: Grand Cadaver – Deities Of Deathlike Sleep
Reviewed by Richard Oliver
Mikael Stanne keeps himself a very busy man. As well as fronting melodic death metal pioneers Dark Tranquillity, he also fronts melodic death metal supergroup The Halo Effect whilst also finding the time to front death metal band Grand Cadaver who are releasing their second album “Deities Of Deathlike Sleep” at the end of August.
Grand Cadaver are a number of bands keeping that classic Swedeath sound alive and well with hardcore punk rhythms, throat shredding vocals and that unmistakable HM-2 guitar sound being key components of what Grand Cadaver do as well as countless other newer Swedish death metal bands. There are bludgeoning pieces of death metal savagery on display here such as ‘A Crawling Feast Of Decay’, ‘The Wishful Dead’ and ‘Funeral Reversal’ which are packed with killer riffs and plenty of that filthy groove but we also get songs which add in a bit of dark and doomy atmosphere such as ‘Serrated Jaws’ and ‘True Necrogeny’ which are still heavy as hell and full of extremity but the mood is just a bit more bleak in these songs.
Mikael Stanne is one of my favourite harsh vocalists in metal and he puts in another blinding performance here sounding that little bit more ferocious than in his other bands to match the extra extremity of the music. Guitarists Stefan Lagergren (The Grifted) and Alex Stjernfeldt (Disrupted) offer forth a fine selection of gnarly riffs and filthy solos whilst the rhythm section of bassist Christian Jansson (Dark Tranquillity) and drummer Daniel Liljekvist (ex-Katatonia) bring that disgusting groove to to the forefront.
‘Deities Of Deathlike Sleep’ is another excellent album from Grand Cadaver who do their ode to the old school Swedish death metal sound but add their own twists and turns into the sound ensuring that they don’t sound like yet another Entombed, Dismember or Carnage carbon copy. This is ripping old school death metal with a sinister doomy mood to it and definitely a recommended listen.
