Down the Left-Hand Path of Swedish Death Metal and the Great Return of Dismember — Part One

“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark” is the famous Hamlet quote that has become synonymous with describing a corrupt, rotten society. To paraphrase it, something rotten was also born over thirty years ago in Denmark’s northern neighbor, Sweden. In March 1988, the cult Nihilist demo Premature Autopsy was released, widely considered the first product of Swedish death metal to be fully free from thrash metal elements. If Premature Autopsy was the first true Swedish death metal demo to break free from the shackles of Bathory’s primitivism and the overwhelming influence of Sodom and Destruction, the next demo Nihilist recorded in December of the same year also shed the bastard sound of Swedish death metal.

Dissatisfied with the sound of their first demo, Nihilist traveled just under a hundred kilometers north of Stockholm to the small town of Grädöö, where with legendary producer Tomas Skogsberg at Studio Sunlight they made history. On the Only Shreds Remain demo, Leif “Leffe” Cuzner (R.I.P. 2006) picked up the guitar and came up with the cult guitar sound run through a fully cranked Boss HM-2 pedal, which gave the brutal riffs a chainsaw-like buzz and from that point on became the defining trademark of Swedish death metal. But Nihilist were just the first of many bands born from the Swedish underground — soon followed by Grave, Entombed (built on the ashes of Nihilist), who are arguably the biggest Swedish death metal band thanks to their cult debut Left Hand Path, Unleashed, Treblinka/Tiamat, and Dismember (among many others).

It’s precisely the last of these that is the occasion for this piece you are (hopefully) reading, which will briefly sketch out Swedish death metal — though more than anything, this is my personal tribute to my favorite genre, and above all to the return of the mighty Dismember, so allow me an occasionally more subjective take. Starting with this: the album Death Metal was one of the first death metal releases to ever touch my eardrums and leave an indelible mark on them. Dismember, one of the big four of Swedish death metal, to the great dismay of many announced their rather unexpected split in October 2011. Fan pressure paid off, and the legendary band — which Nicke Andersson (founder of Nihilist and Entombed, and arguably the central figure of the Swedish death metal scene) had originally named Dismemberizer, but the name was too long for a demo cover and was shortened — announced their return this past January. And in the original lineup of Matti Kärki, David Blomqvist, Robert Sennebäck, Richard Cabeza, and Fred Estby, which recorded one of the greatest death metal albums of all time, the debut Like An Everflowing Stream!

For their return, Dismember chose their home city of Stockholm — specifically the Scandinavian Death Fest (a branch of the legendary American Maryland Death Fest), which ran from October 11 to 13, 2019. Tickets for what was originally a two-day festival sold out in a single day, so the organizers added a third day, headlined — just like the second day — by Dismember. Seeing Swedish death metal on home soil, and Dismember in particular, is bucket-list material, and that was the main reason for my visit to the Swedish capital a month ago.

Arriving in Stockholm you don’t really feel any special spirit of musical history (maybe my expectations in that direction were off) — it’s just a modern, two-million-strong European capital on the Baltic, with a particularly charming old quarter, the so-called Gamla Stan. But if you know where to look, pieces of the brutal history that began being written in Stockholm thirty years ago are hidden everywhere, meaning nothing to the average tourist but making any death metal fan’s heart race — these quiet heralds of a very loud history. Even arriving at the main railway station you stumble upon a window in the floor of the top level. OK, a hole in the floor doesn’t normally mean much, but near the so-called Bögringen, at the end of the eighties on Fridays and Saturdays a crew would gather known as Bajsligan — the Shit Brigade, roughly translated. This consisted of the then-snotty-nosed Nicke Andersson, Fred Estby, Uffe Cederlund, Johnny Hedlund, Anders Shultz, Johan Edlund, Dan Swanö, and many other representatives of Swedish death metal. These guys would kick off their drinking expeditions at Bögringen, and the one most notorious for it was Tomas “Tompa” Lindberg, who reportedly got blackout drunk on multiple occasions and ended his evenings emptying his stomach in a hospital.

The other important gathering spot was the cult record store Heavy Sound Rock Shop (sadly no longer around, though the old city center has an excellent successor in Sound Pollution, with a selection so good you’re better off leaving your wallet at home), which was more than just a shop — bands would leave their demo tapes there, and the entire early Swedish death metal scene revolved around it. In May 1987, Heavy Sound even hosted a signing session with Quorthon (Bathory) for the release of the cult Under the Sign of the Black Mark. Tomas Börje “Quorthon” Forsberg and Bathory are held in especially high esteem by virtually every single person in Swedish death metal, as many openly admit that without Bathory’s influence many other bands simply wouldn’t exist. With his first albums, Quorthon wasn’t just the biggest influence on Norwegian black metal — he also proved to the young people who would later create Swedish death metal what could be achieved with dedication and hard work. Given the eternal influence and immortal music that Quorthon left behind after his all-too-early death (he died on June 3, 2004, aged just 28), it was only fitting to pay tribute to this giant with a visit to his grave at Sandsborgs Cemetery.

The very first evening in Stockholm was dedicated to death metal, as Dismember — even before their official concert return on October 10, 2019 — launched their beer, a “death lager” called Like An Everflowing Stream, brewed by Macken Bryggeri. The brewery had previously brewed a beer for Entombed, with the artfully crafted bottle labels created by the multi-talented Jonathan Hulten, guitarist of Tribulation. For the release party of their beer, Dismember invited fellow metallers Lik, with the American black/death metal duo (live, a trio) Impure rounding out the bill. The latter, playing at club Debaser — which filled up nicely in about half an hour — ran through most of the blasphemous debut Satan’s Eclipse, released this year, and made a solid impression. Impure play a primitive blend of primal death/black metal that musically sits closest to Finland’s Archgoat: simple riffs with rare but positively standout soloing, dragged from the depths of hell by Satyrannical Lord of Assault, and chaotic drums piloted by Horned Father of Desecration, who while bashing away also handles an ultra-deep growl — all without gasping for air, which live comes across as genuinely staggering and deserves serious respect. Impure did start to run out of steam toward the end due to the relative simplicity of their music, but they more than delivered on their mission to warm up the crowd. Even better, though, were Lik, torchbearers of the younger generation of Swedish death metal, who live are anything but a corpse — which, translated from Swedish, is exactly what their name means. Lik have two outstanding albums behind them that sonically owe a great deal to the later-era Dismember school (Autopsy-style death metal meets Iron Maiden melody, basically), yet the foursome sounds incredibly fresh and downright lethal. They played a good chunk of the debut Mass Funeral Evocation and its follow-up Carnage, plus the new single Revel In Gore — killingly good, with Matti Kärki lending his vocals on the EP Sthlm Death Metal — and despite slightly rough sound and all the stage banter being in Swedish (boo!), they proved exactly why Dismember themselves took them under their wing so quickly. Lik also played the third day of the Scandinavian Death Fest three days later, but even so you could barely wait for them to drag you back into the war trenches, among cannibalistic corpses, and skin you alive.

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Next time: even more death metal!

Photos: Nina Grad
Literature: EKEROTH, Daniel, Swedish Death Metal. New York, Bazillion Points Books, 2015.