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HEAVYDEATH
Eternal Sleepwalker

Svart (2015)
Rating: 8/10

How is it humanly possible that a band can release seven demos, one single and an EP all in the space of one year?! And if that’s not enough, somehow between this they have recorded their debut album!

The band I speak of is Sweden’s menacing drone gods Heavydeath who come not only equipped with a cool, yet sullen album cover, but a trudging, buzzing hum of heavyweight sound that will keep you up for months on end. Although very simplistic by nature, this beast is still one which harbours a sound that is difficult to pin down.

Heavydeath is a trio consisting of members Nicklas Rudolfsson (vocals / guitar), Johan Bäckman (bass) and Daniel Moilanen (drums), and the oozing nature of the composition suggests a strong lean towards a slow, trudging and very ashen style of doom metal.

Completely bereft of frills, the seven lengthy tracks on offer have a harmful, exhausting buzz about them and are graced by a gloomy, booming vocal tone that echoes across the horizon of pallid sound like some sorcerer conjuring up demons. The only variation comes when Nicklas Rudolfsson takes on a black metal rasp, but it’s more of a mocking sneer rather than brief yap. Beneath his derision though, there is an underlying current of sombreness constructed of a distorted bass and guitar mesh to the point of each track labouring with menace.

The most punishing of these artefacts is the gruelling ‘Bow Down’ which admittedly does get more, and dare I say it, psychedelically glum as it toils into its final quarter. However, this is not a record that bores – far from it, in fact – as Heavydeath dishes up these continuous grey slabs of disharmony which, after just one spin, really do affect the hearing, balance and brain, reducing it to a quivering mass of traumatised jelly.

At times there are some haunting vocal chants, giving each track a real sinister air, but the general rolling buzz-like haze has a hum like some nefarious scientific antennae sitting in solitude on a grey hillside in rainy Britain. ‘Road To The Fire’ is a prime example of such heavyweight menace; the guitar and bass just continuously churns in bleak fashion until the listener is forced to submit through pummelling injuries. Again, there’s that deathly grimace from Rudolfsson, while behind him that deadly duo of Bäckman and Moilanen just keep turning the cogs to force out that pale hypnotizing grind.

Only ‘Eat The Sun’ comes as some sort of relief because it clocks in at under five-minutes, but it still groans and buzzes like a fizzing pylon on a stormy night; but fair play to the lads for upping the pace on this one. However, the light is soon extinguished with another monolithic episode in the form of ‘Eternal Sleepwalker’.

And that’s pretty much it, with ‘Heavy As Death’ and ‘Beyond The Riphean Mountains’ offering up similar melancholic chants of fuzz before it’s time to seek the somnambulist within oneself and take to the night haunted by this primitive, and almost lifeless soundtrack of dreary wonder.

Neil Arnold

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