Entombed
To Ride, Shoot Straight And Speak The Truth
Treeman Recordings

Entombed are back! Former death-metal gurus and heavy metal innovators Entombed released their first record in 1990, Left Hand Path (with nice songs such as Were Supposed To Rot, But Life Goes On) followed by Clandestine in 1991. Back then it was pure, fast but melodic death metal, but with the following releases, an EP named Hollowman and an LP named Wolverine Blues they took it one step further making the music a bit more heavy and closer to "ordinary" heavy metal. Thanks to an innovative use of samplers and the ability to look beyond the normal heavy metal scene (something that lots of metal bands unfortunately rarely do) they succeed in coming up with an individual sound that sounds fresh and with a distinctive character.

After Wolverine Blues four years of record company trouble followed. Fortunately, they came out from it as an even better band. With their latest release, DCLXVI, To Ride, Shoot Straight And Speak The Truth (note: of course DCLXVI is 666 in latin) they continue on the same track as on Wolverine Blues but with a fresher and more 1997ish sound. The death metal elements are reduced but not totally gone and now they even have a short piano song. But have no fear, they still knows how to rock. Nicke Andersson (also guitarist in Hellacopters) plays the drums as a lunatic, L-G Petrov shoutsings better than ever and the guitars and bass players (J. Sandström, Monster Cederlund and Alex Hellid) do their jobs excellently.

I'm glad to say that heavy metal-Sweden is feeling very good at the moment. Only really great bands can be away for 4 years, appear as "houseband" for a television gameshow and return with as much cred as ever. And as Nicke Andersson himself put it: "Everybody has been waiting for us to release a record so they know what to sound like. Now they know."

Copyright © 1997 Erik Starck