Solid bludgeoning
Any band belonging to death metal and has been around for twenty years certainly earn themselves the title of ‘stalwarts’. Swedish death masters, Dismember, have been releasing albums on and off for two decades with varying amounts of success. They arguably peaked in 1993 with the album ‘Indecent and Obscene’ and thus followed a more melodious path with their next album ‘Massive Killing Capacity’. This was followed by the commercially disappointing ‘Death Metal,’ and then by ‘Hate Campaign’, a somewhat underrated album that saw them lose connection with Nuclear Blast. Dismember finally found a new home with Regain Records (who bought the rights to their earlier albums) and the self-titled ‘Dismember’ is their second opus for Regain. I’m not sure if their new home is giving them inspiration because ‘Dismember’ is a bludgeoning slab of death as you’ll ever likely to hear.
'Dismember' is obviously an album by a band that know what they're doing. The song structure, the use of dynamics within the music, albeit subtle dynamics, wreak of experience. The fact that the blasting opener 'Death Conquers All' is followed by the slow tempo slugger 'Europa Burns' suggest that Dismember are quite happy in their death metal skin to avoid the same song ten times trap. Granted, the third track 'Under A Blood Red Sky' quickly gets back to punish mode, but the Iron Maiden-esque last ninety-seconds comes completely out of left field. But that is the key to the success of this album, not only does it batter the senses with extremely heavy guitars, pounding rhythms and lightning speed, it also contains that elusive hook and nugget of melody that can make a load of noise into a great album. 'The Hills Have Eyes' is a perfect example of this uncompromising brutality mixed with that essence of a good riff and hook-driven guitar work.
'Tide Of Blood' has one of the great metal beginnings. Chugging, chords, harmonies, change of pace, quality solo work from both David Blomqvist and Martin Persson add up to fifty-seconds of pure metal bliss. It is these moments that make 'Dismember' a great death metal album. 'Dark Depths' is nice change of pace that grooves more than thrashes but it doesn't sound out of place on the album, a credit to the song-writers.
'Dismember' is full of great ideas without it losing sight of what it's all about or where the band came from. It's heavy, brutal and sonically punishing, in other words, everything you want from this type of music. But it also never loses sight of the 'hook' to draw you in and I love albums like that, I'm sure you will to. This album will please Dismember fans and will be an injustice if it doesn't get them new ones.