KAAMOS’ successfully achieved objective for this debut sounds definitely that to recapture all the grandeur of the original Swedish Death Metal sound. After a seven inch and two demos the band have proven ready for a record deal. Hell yes. This self titled Cd is permeated by a sound that is early speed/death Death Metal to the bone without any kind of soft Metal influences, grindcore or whatesoever, not as distorted as GRAVE or DISMEMBER, nor as classically pompous as ENTOMBED. Pure Death in its very essence, with distorted yet not overly low vocals as it was custom among the initiators. To define and constrain KAAMOS as a retro band would be somewhat limiting however. Death Metal itself is ageless, being the incarnate form of all that is supremely dark and the uttermost extreme. Although styles and influences have come and gone with the passage of time, the real core of this music has always stayed the same, and well, I guess KAAMOS just tried to strip all the gloss that was accumulated in the past 10 years in puny attempts to make it look nicer for the big crowd, and re-exposed its putrid face to Earth. It sounds as if the best of efforts have been made to make every single riff, every single arrangement studied and recalculated a hundred times to have this album as compact and structured as possible. Fast and upbeat from start to end, this is brutal shit as it was meant in the beginning of our times. The main pity is that the promo didn’t come with any lyrics thay look quite interesting as well. Speed and structures can roughly be reminiscent of UNLEASHED “Where no Life Dwells” era yet this was much more evident in the latest red demo than in this full length, which is more complex, more organic. The dark artwork, the obscure, magick lyrics fit more that hybrid plasma of Death/Black metal that was before the whole scene splintered in separated, backstabbing trends (and my laugh of scorn goes to Black Metal first, which instead of sounding more and more extreme with its departure, has just become weaker and weaker by losing its older half, with its ludicrous weak sounds, and ridicolous monkey vocals). GROTESQUE and SADISTIC INTENT can’t but spring to mind at least on a purely stylistical level, which are not bad bands to cite in a review are they?

 

Tracks (9): 1) Corpus Vermis 2) Circle of Mania 3) The Stom of Coming 4) Khem 5) Doom of Man 6) Blood of Chaos 7) Curse of Aeons 8) The Chasm 9) Cries of the Damned