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“The slaughter house” hailing from the cold northern lands of Sweden has finally opened its doors again after three years of wait, and welcomes us “warmly” inside. Don’t be fooled, Tragedy will be spoken, and is unleashed with deadly consequences upon what remains of the humankind. Those five butchers from ‘Miseration’ will tear apart anything, which is made of flesh & blood. So be prepared to get your brain cut out of you skull. This is freaking BRUTAL, and a welcomed change to the already over flooded Scandinavian death metal scene, centered in Gothenburg.
All musicians are delivering a delightful and at times “chaotic” performance perfectly telling the stories of tragedies caused by human or nature. Ten songs running a total time of three quarters will guide your mind through the musical landscape addressing the diversity of tragedies. This is the third effort from the quintet, following up on the acclaimed sophomore release ‘The Mirroring Shadow’ from 2009. One thing is for sure, the latest album is walking a different path than its predecessor, which brought our minds to unexplored territories of melodic landscapes. Four songs has caught my ears attention, the opener ‘Stepping Stone Agenda’, song number three ‘Ghost Barrier’, song number seven ‘On Wings of Brimstone’ and the ending song ‘Waylayer’. All four songs are representing the full repertoire of the band, and the vibe of the album as a whole. The power, brutality and chaotic feeling ‘Stepping Stone Agenda’ brings to the table, it’s well structured, yet at points it’s a tremendous chaotic beautifully mess. The tempo changes and melodic passages of ‘Ghost Barrier’, the melodic chorus with clean singing by Christian on ‘On Wings of Brimstone’ and the insane, scary intro and weird atmosphere of the last song ‘Waylayer’. All showing different aspects of the album, and on top of that add layers of avant-garde elements, haunting perfectly in the background, by the use of folk instruments such as the mandolin and the Indian harp Esraj, creating a very diverse musical experience.
The vocal performance by frontman Christian is again top notch. He is setting each tone perfectly right with his powerful voice, and has a sick voice range from clean to very deep and brutal harsh growls. His clean singing style is only used once during the entire tracklist, and that’s in the choruses of the song ‘On Wings of Brimstone’. Though my ears would have appreciated more of his well-known clean vox, but again his way of growling with hellish varied growls executed with perfection, saturates me more than enough. Admitting this guy is almost like a god. It’s not a one man show though, and Jani & Marcus are creating some amazingly aggressive and heavy riffs with support from the blast beat drumming machine Mr. Nilsson. The production is a bit mushy and weak throughout the album, but overall I have enjoyed every second listening to this brutal insanely beast awoken from the deepest abyss, and on each spin travelling through the tragedies, I dig up things not heard before. For those of you hungering for some bloodbath, look no further. This release will satisfy even the thirstiest death metal head on earth, and those of you already familiar with Miseration should not miss out on this release either, even though it’s walking a different and more aggressive path then before. It’s a chaotic untamed beast, but they still manage to control it effortless. And a last salute to the remarkable cover artwork for “Tragedy has Spoken” created by Pär Olofsson (Immolaton, The Facesless, Immortal and Abysmal Dawn,). It’s absolutely stunning and one of the most impressive arts, I have laid my eyes on for a very long time. It’s beautifully illustrating the tragedies and the chaotic weird atmosphere with its use of colors and drawings. Pär Olofsson has outdone himself with this artwork, and it helps raising the overall score for this release. In my opinion a cover is almost as important as the music itself, and completes the whole musical package delivered by the band.
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