Miasmal- MiasmalI almost didn't review this album.
Full disclosure: I was never a big fan of the traditional SwedDeath sound. Dismember, Grave, Entombed, Unleashed... they put me to sleep. They lacked much of the brutality, technicality or progressive elements that made American Death Metal so amazing, but also lacked the pure insanity and suffocating atmosphere of Finnish Death Metal. SwedDeath has always sounded stale, boring and lifeless, and it doesn't help that every band from Sweden seemed to sound the same. The lack of variety and ingenuity from the Swedish Death Metal scene has made it my least favorite of the major scenes.
Miasmal is quite literally a monument to the many accomplishments of Swedish Death Metal: every riff, idea or lyrical concept ever touched upon by any Swedish Death Metal band in history is located within this album. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here, searching for any originality: these Gothenburg(GAH!) Swedes cannot be bothered to come up with anything on their own.
It really is a marvel of scene worship: Miasmal has not one original idea. Not a single one. I have listened to a lot of pointless worship and drivel over the years, but Miasmal takes the cake of complete unoriginality, shits on it, then marries it and spawns a dozen cute little cakes of unoriginality. The whole thing is one gigantic fucking blur of Sweden, with no songs, arrangements or riffs that ever stand out or leave a lasting impression. The vocals? Exactly like one would expect. The guitar sound? Buzzsaw... yawn. Drum triggers? What the fuck are those? It is all so predictable, I am literally dumbfounded by the whole thing. How the band ever released this album without getting slapped with multiple lawsuits is completely beyond my ability to comprehend. Inoffensive and utterly forgettable, Miasmal is one of the few albums I have ever heard where I wonder why it even exists.
Full disclosure: I was never a big fan of the traditional SwedDeath sound. Dismember, Grave, Entombed, Unleashed... they put me to sleep. They lacked much of the brutality, technicality or progressive elements that made American Death Metal so amazing, but also lacked the pure insanity and suffocating atmosphere of Finnish Death Metal. SwedDeath has always sounded stale, boring and lifeless, and it doesn't help that every band from Sweden seemed to sound the same. The lack of variety and ingenuity from the Swedish Death Metal scene has made it my least favorite of the major scenes.
Miasmal is quite literally a monument to the many accomplishments of Swedish Death Metal: every riff, idea or lyrical concept ever touched upon by any Swedish Death Metal band in history is located within this album. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here, searching for any originality: these Gothenburg(GAH!) Swedes cannot be bothered to come up with anything on their own.
It really is a marvel of scene worship: Miasmal has not one original idea. Not a single one. I have listened to a lot of pointless worship and drivel over the years, but Miasmal takes the cake of complete unoriginality, shits on it, then marries it and spawns a dozen cute little cakes of unoriginality. The whole thing is one gigantic fucking blur of Sweden, with no songs, arrangements or riffs that ever stand out or leave a lasting impression. The vocals? Exactly like one would expect. The guitar sound? Buzzsaw... yawn. Drum triggers? What the fuck are those? It is all so predictable, I am literally dumbfounded by the whole thing. How the band ever released this album without getting slapped with multiple lawsuits is completely beyond my ability to comprehend. Inoffensive and utterly forgettable, Miasmal is one of the few albums I have ever heard where I wonder why it even exists.
Miasmal has left me wondering what the fuck to do. I have no real grounds to grade this album: after admitting that Swedish Death Metal bores me, it would be obvious that Miasmal would put me in a coma. Why bother? Or more importantly, why bother reviewing something you know you will hate? I can sum it up like this: if you live for Swedish Death Metal and hate originality, than Miasmal is the greatest accomplishment in the history of music: the genetically pure synthesis of everything you love: the Dream of the 3rd Reich. For the rest of us, Miasmal represents another eulogy to originality in Death Metal today. Truly, a triumph and a tragedy rolled all into one.
Rating: ?/10
