Sweden’s Puteraeon are back once again with another fine slice of old school death metal, laced with lyrical Lovecraft worship.
This band are one of the busiest and hardest working bands I have come across in a long time. Since forming in 2008 they have self released three demo E.P’s, two full length albums on Cyclone Empire and a 7″ split with Revel In Flesh, making this latest offering “The Crawling Chaos” their seventh release in six years, being in an active band myself, just imagining the amount of time and work involved in keeping up this relentless pace makes my brain sweat.
As soon as the lengthy intro riff starts to ooze out of the speakers, the sound is immediately reminiscent of classic “Autopsy”, something I am more than happy about, as soon as the pace picks up this influence becomes ever more apparent with the growling vocals, old school groovy riffs offset by melodic solos and classic DM drum beats, it’s an awesome listen from start to finish, also bringing to mind bands like “Asphyx”, “Grave” and “Vomitory” along the way.
But there is a lot more to this album than first appears, I found the intricacies of the writing really became more apparent on repeated listens, with a great pairing of chunky riffs with intricate harmony work over the top of them which sounds awesome and brings a unique sound to the songs that sets them apart from being run of the mill old school death metal worship. The last track on the album “Welcome Death” takes a slower and darker approach which is a punishing end to the album and shows great promise for some interesting progression in the bands future.
As far as the production goes this album carries that unmistakable Swedish DM sound, plenty of mid cutting through to make everything sound especially nasty, guitars so crunchy they sound like someone blending a house brick, and the vocals sat right on top of the mix to get right in your face.
With so many great bands dominating the Swedish scene at the moment delivering a similar sound, it is hard for newer bands to stick out and stand tall among the big names on the circuit. PUTERAEON have managed to mark themselves out as a band who mean serious business and this album more than proves that they are worth your time.
So overall this is a pretty deep album that demands several listens to really get your teeth into (which for an old school death metal album is a huge compliment in itself), it’s definitely a step up for the band in terms of writing and shows a lot of promise for their future work, if they continue maturing along this path then I can see them delivering something very special in the not too distant future.
(8.5/10 Mark Gleed)
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