UMUR
"Painful Death" is the first demo release by Swedish death metal act Putrefaction. The demo was independently released in March 1989. Putrefaction was a side-project for the members of Grave, and it was relatively shortlived with only this demo under their belt before disbanding. The content of the demo was made available on the 2011 Grave compilation album "Necropsy - The Complete Demo Recordings 1986-1991", which also features all demo material by Corpse/Grave. Chronologically "Painful Death" came out one month after Grave´s second demo release "Sexual Mutilation" from February 1989.
Listening to the three tracks on the 12:09 minutes long demo it is a bit hard to understand the need to release the material under a different monicker, because this has Grave stamped all over it. They probably had too much time on their hands out there on the island of Gotland, isolated from the mainland death metal scene, and played on two horses. Putrefaction was as mentioned soon laid to rest though, and the members of the band continued using only the Grave monicker. Stylistically this is old school Swedish death metal with some pretty distorted and unintelligible growling vocals (which is where Putrefaction are different from Grave).
The recording quality is decent for a March 1989 demo, but it´s nothing speciel. The same can be said about the songwriting and the musical performances. It´s all decent but nothing out of the ordinary compared to some of the contemporary releases coming out of mainland Sweden. A 2.5 star (50%) rating is warranted.