"The wacken carnage" CD by Bloodbath

by Björn Thorsten Jaschinski (10.07.2008) If your average band performs in front of an audience for the first time, nervous breakdowns and wrong notes are common and normal. This band, consisting of Swedish old school Death Metal mavens, assumedly was nervous, too, when the members saw the masses just ten minutes before their gig on some nice afternoon at the Wacken Open Air 2005 - but the veterans from Katatonia, Opeth etc. just didn’t show it. Mikael Akerfeldt, who didn’t play on "Nightmares made flesh", was aboard again, and producer and musical icon Dan Swanö was still aboard. Together with Katatonia’s Blackheim, Swanö zipped back and fro tirelessly for backing vocals during those twelve pieces of Death at its best - I wonder when he finally has the balls to reform Edge Of Sanity and go on tour with them? Anyway, according to the classic rules of Swedish Death, the experts rumble roughly all the way through "Breeding death", "So you die" and "Brave new hell", but they do let leak through their versatility and mastery from time to time. This precious CD/DVD double feature is ear AND eye candy.