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ENTRAILS
The Tomb Awaits

F.D.A. Recotz (2011)
Rating: 6/10

Mmmm… well, it looks like Entombed’s 1990 classic album Left Hand Path. The logo, the cover art and the sound is very much Swedish, which is no real surprise in the sense that these guys are Swedish, but I’m wondering why this is such an imitation?

I hear some reviews crying that this is no Entombed rip-off, but I’m not convinced by their pleas. From that loose, chainsaw guitar sound to the gravelled vocals it’s unlikely this would exist if Entombed hadn’t. Sure, it’s okay paying homage to something, but to dress it up as something similar just because there is a revival happening just isn’t on.

Sure, these guys have existed in some form since the early 90s, but what seems clear is that they are still stuck there, insistent on churning out what they probably called “retro death metal”, but when you hear the fuzzy rage of opener ‘Unleashed Wrath’ you’ll be thinking of Entombed, Dismember etc.

That’s not to say that this album is a complete rip-off, as the band achieve some interesting groove-based dynamics, particularly on the chug-fest ‘Crawling Death’ which features an interesting piano injection to create some type of dismal horror film soundtrack. But soon it shifts back into that fuzzy juggernaut we’ve become not just accustomed to, but slightly irritated by.

Lyrically it’s pretty naïve, with tales of the macabre, as one would expect from a lot of death metal acts… if it were 1990! But this is 2011 and I’m not hearing enough here to rip my head from my shoulders.

‘Eaten By The Dead’ is your basic mid-tempo riff monster with a torturous solo 90 seconds in. But vocally it’s the usual gruff, chesty phlegm-lined gurgle. ‘To Live Is To Rot’ offers us some more quicksand sludge, but randomly slap any track on and you’ll find a whole host of Swedish influences, which, if you ask me, are all over this record making me wonder why I’d listen to this opus when there was so much stuff, and far better, recorded two decades previous.

I’m guessing that Entrails have reformed at the right time and found their niche in 2011, what with the death and thrash metal revival taking place. But so many of these bands are formulaic and mediocre and I find it hard to praise such a band when in 1991 they probably would have been swallowed by the far more accomplished acts. Call me harsh, but when Entombed offered the left hand path, Entrails, logo and all, should have taken the right one!

Neil Arnold

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