GRAVE — Into the Grave (review)

GRAVE — Into the Grave album cover Album · 1991 · Death Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
3.5/5 ·
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.
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