Internal Decay - A Forgotten Dream (1993)

Melodic death/doom somewhere between At the Gates (pre-Slaughter) and Phlebotomized, with a haunting atmosphere and some very tasty riffs. You'll catch glimpses of female vocals near the end of the record, and snippets of keyboards are interspersed throughout, but for the most part they manage to pull off the gloominess with traditional metal instrumentation. Songs make the transition from borderline thrash to full-out downtempo doom fairly smoothly, and come right back to hook you in further. Overall this is one hell of a record, and surprisingly under-appreciated.

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Kralizec - Origin

Quirky key-heavy melodically-inclined sometimes-technical death metal with the odd nod to folk metal ala Ensiferum, Brutal Death, and oldschool Gothenburg bands. They also have some of the most blatantly programmed drums I think I've ever heard.

If some of the clean vocal sections sound oddly familiar to you, it's likely because they were contributed by Patrick Loisel (now the frontman of Augury) who also played lead guitar and keys on this album.

This album is ridiculously hard to come by on the interwebs, so I hope you like it.
Get it here.

Cephalectomy - Eclipsing the Dawn (2004)

This awesome death/grind band from Nova Scotia, Canada, has put out perhaps the funnest album in the world, Eclipsing the Dawn, which could most easily be summed up as a mixture of the craziness of !T.O.O.H.! and the epicness of Lykathea Aflame, but simply putting it that way would do the band a massive disservice.

The album's forty minute runtime is split into eight songs, all of which are written in a more or less linear fashion, much like Deathspell Omega or more recently Ulcerate. But where those bands used that technique to create unnerving soundscapes, Cephalectomy uses it to cram as many jaw-droppingly awesome riffs into every song as humanly possible, and are unafraid of shifting gears before the listener really has time to readjust to what was just being played a few seconds earlier. It takes a few listens to really absorb, but it's well worth the effort in the end.

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Leukemia - Love [advance promo] (1997)

Genre - Death Metal, Melodic Death Metal

Now, as I both have not listened to this album nearly enough to justify a full review, and am not in a particular mood to write one, I will but give a brief rundown of this release for fans. "Love" is/was slated to be Swedish Death Metal band Leukemia's third release. It was mastered in the mid 90's by Dan Swanö at Unisound Studios, but even after over ten years, a name change, and a reawakening of the band, has yet to see the light of day in the form of a proper release. Some time ago it was let known by the band that they intend to finally bring it to the masses sometime in 2008. As the year closed, it was pushed to 2009. Why? I don't know. The band is obscure as all hell.

Anyway, I ran across this interesting tape-rip of what I think is a '97 "advance-promo" of the album a day or so ago, and knowing that there are still some fans in the death metal underground who would care to give this a listen, I thought I'd post it.

The sound, as I had expected, is more melodic than their previous releases, and Dan Swanö himself pops in more than a few times to give his help in the form of his awesome growl or powerful baritone, possibly a key section or two too.

Now, I don't know if this is the same form this album will be released as this year (if it's released at all), but this is all we have for now.

Give it a shot-

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