Author: Sandi Sadar Šoba
Artist: Entombed
Label: Threeman Recordings
Release: 2004
Length: 38:35
Rating: 4/5
There are live records, and then there are proper live records, and either way the intrigue is that much bigger when the record spinning in your player belongs to an otherwise orthodox death or death’n’roll outfit that gets help from an entire arsenal of musicians from the Stockholm Opera and Ballet! This time, the ecstatic experience and the decadence of noise in a temple of serious music were courtesy of Entombed. LG Petrov and company may not be the most musically schooled dudes around (or maybe they just hide it really well), but Unreal Estate, true to its title, is an unconventional release brimming with bizarre beauty.
First, a few trivial facts to put the listening in the right time and place. Entombed decided on this rather un-metal experiment in March 2002, and with some wooing and a peculiar, sweaty charm they lured in the dancers of the Royal Swedish Ballet, while the chamber musicians of the Royal Opera House took care of the orchestral side of this truly avant-garde undertaking. To suit this special atmosphere of gothic grandeur, the otherwise thoroughly organic death metal compositions had to be prettied up, rearranged and reshaped, while the classically trained musicians were free to bring in their own intuition and, in the name of creative freedom, tweak the rough contours of this truly monstrous conglomerate by feel. The union of two different, seemingly incompatible worlds is raw, rugged and magnetically beautiful, and the unsuspecting audience was handed royal earplugs and a big warning about extreme loudness before entering the hall of enlightenment. In spite of everything, the whole tour was a total success, and every night the crowd in the packed hall rewarded everyone behind the project with standing ovations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eC6v8V9nGaE
Now let’s get to the record itself, Unreal Estate – the documented sonic record of a miraculous fusion that won’t leave you cold! Partly because right after the piano intro of DCLXVI you realize that, despite the unusual surroundings and the fact that the audience was witnessing a proper death metal ballet, Entombed are no less brutal and metal-sharp. We listeners of this atypical record, though, are robbed of the visual side of the dance spectacle. So all that’s left is dissecting the soul’s essence that LG Petrov, Ule Cederlund, Alex Hellid, Jörgen Sandström and Peter Stjärmvind caught in the very moment of recording. Chief Rebel Angel roars with grotesque power and raw, unsmoothed sharpness, while Petrov, in a clean, fresh, almost Slayer-esque way, delivers his demonic visions of hell, already proclaimed on the album Morning Star. The guitars are massive, distorted-beautiful and crystal clear at once. No needless clutter from slip-ups, and the distillate of full-on music creates an atmosphere of suspense and pure contrasts between calm and silence. The thread flows quite naturally into Say It Slugs, one of the main aces of Uprising, which ominously grows into a mighty, suggestive, repetitive and cataclysmically cathartic recital in the intermezzo of It Is Later Than You Think. The age of madness has arrived, and the return to the natural state of cacophony is gallantly pulled off by Returning To Madness. The performance is precise and unfeigned, and Petrov, with his worn-out death’n’roller’s rasp, stands out from the sonic mosaic like a merciless prophet of the apocalypse. The next peak is Mental Twin, where Petrov, with no needless complications, delivers the words “Me and myself / We’re not one of you / We have an alibi to always get thru / Me and myself / My mentor and guide / You’re my tormentor / Always by my side” and manically opens up his heart chakra. What follows is unexpected, as the Swedish veterans go back to 1995 and bring Night Of The Vampire, from the split EP they cut on vinyl with New Bomb Turks, into a new context. Otherwise the whole gig is dominated by songs from Uprising and Morning Star, but after almost 40 minutes of intense dramatic build-up the show wraps up with Left Hand Path, from the cherished self-titled debut of 1990. The final brick in this perfect experience is massive and atmospherically thick. In the black hole of repeating guitar echoes, the slow funeral rhythm of drums and bass, the inevitable goodbye begins.
The act is over, and this grand finale is followed only by a string of sincere standing ovations, whistles of delight and exhausting applause, as the heavy curtains fall over the stage boards. The lights go out and the voices from the house of ghosts of the past fall silent. Under the vaults of the temple of high culture, the words left unspoken at the concert defiantly worm their way into your mind, expressing the very essence of Entombed and the range of their thinking. “I am my own God, master, slave / And I will be beyond the grave / No one will take my soul away / I carry my own will and make my day”. The proof is the record Unreal Estate, with which they stand up to all the purists and narrow-minded “connoisseurs” who measure a band’s quality solely by commercial success and the number of greenbacks earned. Entombed are original and answer to no one, and Unreal Estate works so magically and mightily precisely because of its sheer unbelievability. The only thing missing is that, being limited to an audio format, we were robbed of the visuals. Otherwise there’s nothing to fault here, as the quality of the recording, with its rich set of photos, at least somewhat conjures up the mood of that cold February evening when lights of a completely different brilliance flared up over the Stockholm opera and ballet, and the shapes of an entirely different art and aesthetic beauty stepped out of the shadows …
Lineup
Lars Göran Petrov – vocals, concert piano
Ule Cederlund – guitar, backing vocals
Jörgen Sandström – bass
Alex Hellid – guitar
Peter Stjärmvind – drums
Production
Entombed
Tracklist
1. DCLXVI / Intermission
2. Chief Rebel Angel
3. Say It Slugs
4. It Is Later Than You Think
5. Returning To Madness
6. Mental Twin
7. Night Of The Vampire
8. Unreal Estate
9. In The Flesh
10. Something Out Of Nothing
11. Left Hand Path (Outro)
