UMUR "Into the Grave" is the debut full-length studio album by Swedish death metal act Grave. The album was released through Century Media Records in August 1991. Grave were one of the most prolific names on the Swedish death metal demo scene in the late 80s/early 90s and "Into the Grave" firmly put them on the international death metal map too. The early beginnings of the band can be traced as far back as 1984 under the Rising Power, but in 1986 they settled on the Corpse monicker and released the 1987 "Black Dawn" demo before ultimately changing their name to Grave in 1988. They released quite a few demos and promo tapes in the late 80s/early 90s before being signed by Century Media Records for the release of "Into the Grave".

The music on "Into the Grave" is "classic" old school Swedish death metal. That means pretty simple, brutal, mid- to fast paced death metal. The tracks generally feature simple songwriting structures and few surprises, and Grave have more focus on sounding dark, rotten, and brutal, than on writing varied and structurally challenging material.

"Into the Grave" was produced by Thomas Skogsberg and Grave at Sunlight Studios and that´s audible. The downtuned guitars have that characteristic Sunlight buzzsaw tone and the production is generally dark, raw and brutal sounding. The vocals by frontman Jorgen Sandström are very brutal yet still relatively intelligible. The gore/horror lyrical themes are typical for the time and songtitles like "Deformed" and "Extremely Rotten Flesh" are tell that story.

The 11 tracks on the 42:24 minutes long album lack a bit in the variation department but other than that I´m pretty sure fans of the genre have endless praise for "Into the Grave"...and rightly so. While Grave´s music is arguably a little one-dimensional in nature, they are quite accomplished musicians and everything is delivered with great skill, conviction, and passion (without sounding technical in any way). "Into the Grave" is considered a seminal Swedish death metal release for a reason and fully deserves that stamp. A 3.5 star (70%) rating is deserved.

siLLy puPPy Although one of the earliest examples of death metal and one of Sweden’s big four along with Dismember, Entombed and Unleashed, GRAVE has nevertheless become one of the more forgotten of these acts despite having enjoyed considerable success during its initial run. GRAVE was formed by vocalist / guitarist Ola Lindgren in Visby which sits on the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea. Although starting off under the Corpse moniker, the name was changed to GRAVE in 1988 and soon followed by a number of demos, singles and EPs up until the debut album INTO THE GRAVE was released in 1991.

This early lineup included Lingren on guitars and vocals along with Jörgen Sandström who also performed guitars and vocals on the first three albums before jumping over to the more popular Entombed. Jens Paulsson played drums and bass duties were performed by Jonas Torndal. Death metal has become one of the most popular metal subgenera in the last thirty years having branched off into myriad directions but in the early 90s the style was coming of age and showcased a purity of the style that has been lost in time. After INTO THE GRAVE, the band would embark on a European and American tour which found them sowing the seeds of death metal destruction but seems to have been relegated as a footnote in old school death metal history.

While not as technical as bands like Death, Atheist, Edge of Sanity, Demilich or Gorguts, GRAVE was very much cranking out all those heavily distorted low-tuned guitar riffs that employed the tremolo picking, growly vocals and double kick blastbeat techniques in the company of other pioneers such as Carnage, God Macabre, Entombed, Dismember and Unleashed before death metal splintered off into the myriad directions of tech death, melo-death, death and roll and what have ya. Many of these bands played together with members switching from one band to another. Despite GRAVE existing as one of the more popular bands of the early 90s, the band became increasingly forgotten due to newer bands pushing death metal ever further into unexplored territories.

In many ways this early 90s style of old death metal is like a museum of sort much like video game museums feature classic arcade games. INTO THE GRAVE showcases the fledgling genre just as it had come of its own and while other bands like Morbid Angel and Death may have been more explorative in terms of advancing the genre, GRAVE performed an excellent example of tracks in this particular phase of the genre with all those characteristics of death metal perfectly executed on INTO THE GRAVE. At this point death metal still had connections to 80s metal styles and therefore had melodic underpinnings that while present were suffocated by the rampaging riffs, death growls and blastbeats.

While it’s true INTO THE GRAVE has little to offer in terms of originality, what i love most about this band’s debut is the consistency of the material presented and how well executed this early style of death metal is and serves as a point of reference for where old school death metal was at the time. While Death was generating the first progressive death metal and Suffocation was getting more brutal followed by bands splintering in all directions, the death metal presented on INTO THE GRAVE is a satisfying snapshot of where the genre was at its most pure at the moment when the genre started taking on much more experimental approaches. Death metal is an interesting beast in that the differences are razor thin between certain bands but for some reason this one resonates whereas similar bands like Obituary and Bolt Thrower just don’t quite scratch that itch in the same way. For death metal historians, this is one not to be missed.