vomitory, blood rapture

I could write a paragraph about every song here, but I’ll spare you from that. Instead, I’d like to talk about the production of this album. Simply put, this is absolutely perfect production for a modern death metal album. Absolutely perfect! I shit you not, this is how a modern death metal album should sound (Atheist could have learned from this). The mixing job here is absolutely perfect, giving each instrument the appropriate space to define its presence, while not letting any one individual instrument dominate. That beautiful guitar sound (seriously, it’s beautiful) is just perfect for a Swedeath album, and it’s at the best possible level in the mix so that the riffs are not only audible, but at that perfect level where they can be heard so that you will undoubtedly have them stuck in your head for days and days, possibly longer. The drums have that modern edge to them (read as: triggered), but aren’t obnoxiously loud or too clicky at all. They just sound clean, yet still thick. This is the kind of trigger usage that I have absolutely no problem with. As for the all-important issue of clipping, let’s just say that there’s very little clipping present here. Really, this feels like it’s at a perfect volume level–loud enough to be modern and so that you can hear everything, but not so loud and over-compressed so that everything is a muddy mess. It’s this clean production that really makes me feel that this is an exceptionally catchy album, even by Vomitory standards. While Raped in Their Own Blood, brings in all the riffs we know and love from Vomitory, the production just…isn’t this. If we’re talking about favorite old-school death metal production jobs, I’d definitely mention some Scott Burns album or Demigod’s Slumber of Sullen Eyes first, but for a modern sound, this is what I’d say is probably the best I’ve heard.