Full disclosure: Up until a few days ago, I had never heard of Helslave. When I first started seeing their name blow up my personal Facebook feed, I had to get out my glasses to make sure my friends weren’t hyping up a new Helstar album that I wasn’t aware of. Nope, turns out this is a completely different band. Helslave is a death metal five piece from Italy, although from the sound of their latest album, From the Sulphur Depths, you’d think they hailed from Stockholm, Sweden circa 1991.
From the Sulphur Depths marries the infernal riffing of Entombed with the misanthropic tendencies of early At the Gates. There are several styles of death metal explored throughout, but its this no bullshit approach which serves as the album’s backbone. From the obligatory ominous intro title track, into the appropriately titled “Unholy Graves”, this band means business. Their approach to old school death metal is as foreboding as the hellscape depicted on the front cover.
According to the ever reliable Metal Archives, Helslave was once a melodic death metal band. I find this hard to believe considering they touch on just about every genre except melo death. Sure there’s some melodic elements to the lead guitar playing, particularly on tracks like “Rotting Pile of Flesh” and “Thrive in Blasphemy”, but by no means are they prevalent enough to label this record melo death. This is pure Swedish death worship with a healthy dose of nasty thrash influenced breakdowns to level the playing field (“Thy Will Be Done”, “Desecration”).
“Last Nail in the Coffin” is proof that not all death n’ roll sucks. Its balance of groovy, hard rocking riffage and brutal gutturals had this amateur metal album reviewer banging his head from beginning to end. “Perpetual Damnation” is another highlight, showcasing the punk charged side of Swedish death metal in all its crusty, grimy, filth ridden glory. Finally, there’s the Frostian doom of “Funereal Lust” and “The Sentence of the Living”. Both of these tracks boast monolithic misery inducing riffs which would make Tom G. Warrior “OUGH!” in approval. The upcoming crop of death metal bands can learn a thing or two from Helslave. Instead of setting out to sound exactly like *insert classic band here*, and sounding one dimensional as a result, today’s bands should embrace the variety of styles that helped spawn the bastard we all know and love as death metal. The genre wouldn’t exist without the contributions of thrash, doom, and punk, all of which are showcased here at one point or another.
I hope From the Sulphur Depths serves as incentive for whatever new death metal bands there are coming out of Sweden to step up their game, because holy Dan Swanö (who happened to produce this album), Batman. This sounds more Swedish than anything that has come out of Sweden in a long time. It’s so Swedish that I’m sure Helslave would be accepted as honorary Swedes. Could this be the beginning of a new scene; Swedtalian death metal? Probably not, though I better quit while I’m ahead. I’m sure some nerd will be using this term unironically on a forum board before the day is out.
7 out of 10
Label: Pulverised Records
Genre: Death Metal
For fans of: Entombed, At the Gates, Dismember