Vehemency
Swedes and their old school death metal. Read no further if those words already sicken you, but if you are one of those who still check out new bands playing what Dismember, Entombed and Grave did twenty years ago, proceed: Maim’s second album Deceased to Exist, released during the first days of this year, is a very solid piece in that certain style.
And lucky for them, they have not utilized the biggest clichés available, namely the buzzing guitar sound; instead, the guitar sound here is just purely heavy and deep, and so are all the other instruments as well, much thanks to the highly reverberating production that is a definite plus feature of Deceased to Exist, creating an abyssal atmosphere.
Also, the band knows how to slow down and still sound utterly menacing: while songs like the opener ”Gravedigger Sacrifice” attack with moderately high speed, there are, for instance, the Archgoat esque sections of ”Morbid Desecration” and the wholly slow-tempo, doomy ”Crematory” that belong to Deceased to Exist’s finest moments. Another highlight worth mentioning is the closer "Screams of the Mutilated" that, even if otherwise unsurprising, ends the album in sinister solos and spoken samples in the background.
Towards the end of the album the similarity of the songs becomes a little dulling, but nonetheless I can say that Deceased to Exist is a fine old school death metal album with convincing heaviness and darkness. After all, it's not every day when you come across this well done production job combined with crushing, evil compositions. Fans of the style won’t waste their time at all checking out this album, I’m sure.