Ostensibly ‘just’ purveyors of standard-issue HM2 worship, Sweden’s Disrupted do actually offer a bit more than that on new album Stinking Death.

Sure, there’s an awful lot of stuff here that references the usual influences, with Entombed standing out especially on tracks like Spew, but, when the band decide to broaden their horizons a little, as they do on the truly crushing six minute epic Funeral Vomit, they prove they have more than just the one string on their blackened bow.

Funeral Vomit is genuinely exciting, a panoramic, creepy crawler of a track that employs judicious use of atmosphere (I even heard some keyboards in the mix!) to get it’s point across. As ever when a band usually operates at breakneck speed, the drop down in paces on this track carries extra weight and impact (similarly the end of closer Graveyard Torment really grinds the listener into the dust), but it’s not just the drop in speed that makes the difference – the band really exhibit some sharpened songwriting and arrangement smarts here.

If that all sounds a bit ‘progressive’ for your tastes, never fear; Opener Choke on the Cross has all the painstripping capability you’ve come to expect from the band, with Mikael Hanni‘s vocals giving the ears a good old going over, whilst the visceral True Death and Necromantic Breeding also show off the band in vicious light.

The sheet metal wall of sound presented by Thomas Liljekvist and Johan Kvastegård on this writer’s personal fave Coffin Breath is, frankly, as good as it gets, and it has to be said that the sheer weight of riffage provided by this pair over the course of the record is nothing short of miraculous.

Not many surprises, then, but Stinking Death is never less than an exciting listen and fans of old school bellicosity are going to lap it up…



Stinking Death releases on January 24th.