Martyrdöd – Paranoia
Martyrdöd – Paranoia CD (Southern Lord)
I wonder what would happen if a team of experts conducted a scientific search of the entire population of Sweden to try and locate the four or five least capable individuals – people with no discernible aptitude for anything, no musical knowledge or evident skill – and put those people into a room – instruments and microphones assigned at random – with instructions to spend the next 24 hours writing songs for a performance the next day. My guess? They would be better than most of the fledging bands scattered around the world that do not hail from Sweden. I swear there is something in the water (or in the air, or in the food…) over there. Excessive and unnecessarily confusing introductory comments aside, Martyrdöd is a band from Sweden that was not put together by a team of experts, a band that certainly is not devoid of aptitude or skill, a band that is on the forefront of everything that is exciting about heavy music today. Nine years and 4 full-length albums into their career, Martyrdöd has inked a deal with the always-envelope-pushing Southern Lord Records for their latest release, ‘Paranoia’. In the label’s press release for this album, Martyrdöd are referred to as ‘Swedish crust lords… with a straightforward d-beat oriented style…’; for the uninitiated, this means the band’s roots lie in Discharge influenced hardcore, which is evident in places. But there is so much more going on here. Napalm Death seems to be an influence, as do both At The Gates and Entombed. More than anything, though, Martyrdöd’s sound seems forged in the hellish fires of black metal. Unlike ‘classic’, ‘vintage’, or ‘kvlt’ black metal, the production on ‘Paranoia’ is top-notch – sharply defined, perfectly layered, expertly mixed. It’s got that Gothenburg sound, in terms of the listenability and power if not necessarily in terms of ‘that’ guitar sound or the death ‘n’ roll riffery typically associated with that description. All of the song titles are in Swedish, as are the lyrics, which sets the band apart from the pack from the start, and the music… where to begin?! The rhythm section kicks out a blistering noise attack that would, indeed, make the lads in Discharge swell with pride. The vocals, likewise, show descendancy from hardcore and grindcore as well as from thrash and black metal – thankfully never delving into the tired trappings of Cookie-Monsterdom. It’s the guitars, though, that hold everything together and give Martyrdöd their appeal. Three decades of black metal riffing – from Bathory and Darkthrone to the hundreds (or thousands) of bands on the scene today – are on display, holding influence from every style of heavy music imaginable, and Martyrdöd’s guitarists coalesce this wide range of sounds into something that is very much their own. ‘Paranoia’ is a dark, dirty, skull-crushingly heavy album, but it is infused with an energy that makes listening to it a pleasing – if not pleasant – experience. The Impaler @impalerspeaks
