BLOODBATH — Nightmares Made Flesh (review)

BLOODBATH — Nightmares Made Flesh album cover

Album · 2004 · Death Metal

4.5/5 · 2012-03-14
UMUR

"Nightmares Made Flesh" is the 2nd full-length studio album by Swedish death metal act Bloodbath. The album was released through Century Media Records in September 2004. Bloodbath is a death metal supergroup consisting of members and ex-members of some of the most prolific and influential Swedish death- and doom metal acts. The band was originally a side-project for the members and the "Breeding Death (2000)" EP was probably written and released as a hobby project and wasn´t necessarily meant to have a successor, but the EP proved to be highly successful and as a result the debut album "Resurrection Through Carnage (2002)" was released. That album again proved to be a success for the band and Bloodbath therefore opted to release a 2nd album.

There´s been a couple of lineup changes since the debut album as lead vocalist Mikael Åkerfelt (Opeth) has been replaced by Peter Tägtgren (Hypocrisy, Pain), Dan Swanö (Edge of Sanity, Nightingale...etc.)) has shifted from drums to guitars and bass and Martin Axenrot (Opeth) has been brought in as the band´s new drummer. The last two members of the band are still Jonas Renske and Anders Nyström from Katatonia. Both on guitars and bass.

The music on "Nightmares Made Flesh" is more or less what I would call old school Swedish death metal perfection. Not all tracks are equally memorable but even the more standard tracks are greatly enjoyable and there´s nothing below standard on the album. However it´s brilliant tracks like "Cancer of the Soul", "Brave New Hell", "Outnumbering the Day", "Eaten" and "Draped in Disease" that really place the album among the elite of Swedish old school death metal releases. I´ll even go as far as to call "Brave New Hell" one of the greatest old school Swedish death metal tracks written up until then. It´s more than obvious that we´re dealing with very seasoned musicians but certainly also skilled composers. These guys know exactly how an old school Swedish death metal track should sound to satisfy fans of the genre. So yeah it´s not exactly original, but it doesn´t strive to be. That´s the whole point. The band members just love to play the music they played when they were younger and it´s audible.

New vocalist Peter Tägtgren does a great job replacing Mikael Åkerfelt, and personally I prefer his vocals to Åkerfelt´s. While Tägtgren´s vocals are deep growling and commanding just as Åkerfelt´s, his style is more aggressive than the style of his predecessor. His vocals are placed high in the mix, in classic old school death metal style. The rest of the band are very well playing too and while the music style features a rather limited arsenal of stylistic elements you can use if you don´t want the usually conservative fans of old school death metal to scream "treason", Bloodbath are fully capable of changing pace, incorporating semi-melodic leads, and a couple of short acoustic breaks to keep the tracks diverse and interesting. The powerful and raw sound production suits the music really well too and is another great asset to the album.

While a retro sounding death metal album naturally doesn´t present much new, "Nightmares Made Flesh" is in every other way a very successful album. IMO it´s so great that it would pretty surely make it into a top 10 old school Swedish death metal list if such a list was ever created by me. If you´re not familiar with old school Swedish death metal I can highly recommend that you start your journey here. A 4.5 star (90%) rating is deserved.