UMUR
"Love" is the 3rd full-length studio album by Swedish death metal act Leukemia. Leukemia were an act that were active in the early nineties and released two studio albums in "Suck My Heaven (1993)" and "Grey-Flannel Souled (1994)". In 1994 Leukemia changed their name to Lame and recorded an album titled "Love". The album was shelved though and it wasn´t until 2008 that it was dug out and mastered by Dan Swanö (Edge of Sanity, Bloodbath, Nightingale...among others). "Love" was finally released through Vic Records in February 2012 under the Leukemia monicker.
The music on the album is Swedish old school death metal in the sophisticated end of the spectra. Dan Swanö´s involvement is obvious throughout the album. Not only because he sings a couple of clean vocal parts and also occasionally adds semi-proggy synths to the sound, but also because the sound production and especially the guitar sound remind me of Edge of Sanity. Leukemia play a very eclectic type of death metal with influences from all sorts of genres. Tracks like "Emotionally Dead" and "Roses" are semi-progressive in nature but there are more straight forward death metal tracks on the album too. Common for all tracks is that you don´t really know what to expect from them.
Besides the Edge of Sanity sounding guitar sound, which is a nice feature, the sound production suffers a bit from a thin sounding drum production.
To my ears "Love" is a bit of an odd death metal release but I guess fans of the most eclectic Edge of Sanity material can find something to like here. Personally I enjoy the album with some reservations and I´d say a 3 star (60%) rating is warranted.