Imagine a gargantuan freak created by the genetic experiments of the most insane minds on earth. It has broken out of its containment chamber and is now running amok through a major metropolis. It lurches between the skyscrapers devouring all in sight and leaving a path of destruction behind it. Yet it is so ugly and filthy that nobody is willing to risk their lives and take it down. That is the exact mental image that Grave's first album paints for me. Into the Grave is just about the ugliest, most disgusting and above all most brutal thing I've ever heard. Not long ago, I reviewed Entombed's Clandestine, which I consider to be the pinnacle of evolution for Stockholm grinding death metal - by contrast, THIS album is what I consider to be the lumbering, hairy ape of the genre.

The first few minutes of the opening track "Deformed" sets the tone for the album in a way that leaves little to the imagination. A short drum roll backed by bass so distorted that it would make even Danny Lilker's frizzy hair stand on end. The rest is fraught with straightforward riffs which mostly go from quick downpicking to chunky chord hammering. The album never really gets too much faster than mid-pace, but there's really no need for it. Grave is (or was initially) a band that relied on outright brutality more than any of their contemporaries. Everything about their early sound can only be described as oppressive. The Guitars were tuned to B, which was lower than most bands dared to go (excepting, of course, the mighty Carcass), and the notorious Sunlight Studios gritty guitar sound made them appear even thicker to the human ear. The drumming wasn't fast by any means, but it was more than adequate in terms of creativity. And the pacing of it made the songs seem all the more brutal, despite the almost complete absence of blastbeats.

And then there were the vocals. Lordah-lordah-lordah! Jörgen Sandstrom gave the aforementioned lumbering monstrosity a voice, and it was not pretty. Those who thought that Chris Barnes' performance on Tomb of the Mutilated was as guttural as it got for that time period need to hear this one desparately. Sandstrom growls like no man did at the time; guttural, menacing and tortured. There are, of course, better, more dynamic vocalists out there, but Sandstrom's style is perfectly suited for an album such as this, where unrelenting brutality is the game.

Therein, however, lies the problem with this album. The severity of the heaviness, coupled with the gritty production comes at the price of dynamic riffing. Much of Into the Grave tends to be a rather monotonous affair, and in all honesty, there aren't all that many attention-grabbing parts (especially during the second half of the album). Unlike their contemporaries, such as Dismember, Entombed, and Desultory, Grave focused more on low-end chunky riffing (at least on this album), and failed to incorporate a lot of interesting leads, which somewhat dulled the impact made by the music. They should be commended, though, for rectifying this problem on the second album You'll Never See..., without sacrificing the brutality.

But, nonetheless, for its primitive, wall-rattling heaviness, this album is definitely deserving of praise as a milestone in death metal history. Very rarely does a metal album totally demolish the barriers and standards for heaviness within its genre, and Grave's debut is one such album.

This review is credited to:
The Havoc Vulture