ALBUM REVIEW: Into The Maw Of Death – Grand Cadaver

Despite only releasing their debut EP this year, old school death metallers GRAND CADAVER have garnered significant buzz in the underground with their “pick your ‘brutal’ adjective of choice”, as MetalSucks called it, take on aural violence. Hot on its heels is their debut album, the aptly-titled Into The Maw Of Death, and it’s an auditory battering from start to end. 

Disanimated opens the record with furious riffing from guitarists Stefan Lagergren and Alex Stjernfeldt, a buzzsaw sound driven deftly through Marshall stacks and HM-2 pedals. Vocalist Mikael Stanne needs no introduction – his dulcet tones and vicious roars have been the face of DARK TRANQUILITY for years – but here he flexes his most cavernous growls and clear love of meat-and-potatoes old school death metal. It’s a formula kept up throughout Into The Maw Of Death; furious, grinding guitars atop a relentless barrage of drums and bestial growls. Soul Infestation takes two snare hits before launching into an all-out assault of blast beats, while World Mausoleum keeps things short and brutal, its two and a half minutes packed to the rafters with sawing riffs and a stomping groove. 

Given the pedigree of the musicians involved it’s not particularly surprising how well written and performed Into The Maw Of Death is, from the doomier opening of Grim Eternal where the rumbling bass lines shine along with its more dissonant moments, to the rampaging, thrash-flecked Reign Through Fire. The term caveman death metal often gets thrown around when it comes to OSDM but that’s not the case here. GRAND CADAVER might be firmly in the old school camp, but there are moments where they do stretch themselves, as in the atmospheric opening to the title track that flirts with death doom, or the more technical flourishes to riffs on tracks like Reign Through Fire or Soul Infestation. By the time closer Cold Dead Light Leads rolls around with its grinding, stomping groove, GRAND CADAVER have spent 35 minutes battering eardrums without it growing stale or feeling like a re-tread of old ground, which is no mean feat with their style of death metal. 

The triumph of Into The Maw Of Death is in its ability to take a path into OSDM that doesn’t sound like every other revivalist band; there’s a menacing streak to it and an enduring love of death metal of all stripes that shines through. GRAND CADAVER bring so much in from their spheres of melodeath, doom and more, creating an album that’s rooted in old school death but reaches out of it constantly for inspiration. It’s consistently their own take on a genre that while walking well-trodden ground, still sounds fresh, interesting and most of all, fun. 

Rating: 7/10

Into The Maw Of Death is set for release on October 29th via Majestic Mountain Records.

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