These hateful Swedes’ second record will burn your fingers as soon as you pick up a copy, so intensely does it seethe with animosity.
Swinelord is an overwhelming introduction, bellicose rage and blistering pace emanating from deep down inside a portal to a hellish dimension, the music almost obscured by awful void-sounds of torture, the wails of lost souls carried on the hot winds of Purgatory.
Any time the storm calms it only heralds increased intensity, their penchant for sludge drying to a thick, scabrous crust on the surface of their black metal on Rites, solos blurring into maddening feedback.
It takes half a record of impossible venom for them to take a breather, and as drums relent and riffs slow, so depths reveal themselves, We Use Your Dead As Vessels serving as a summation of the feral anxiety, apoplexy and horror that combine to create a record much more than the sum of its parts, written by a band who perhaps do not yet realise the full extent of their dreadful potential.
