Most of the music we write about here at NCS is the kind of thing you’d see in the dictionary as examples under the word “bludgeoning.” But for today, we were all set to write about a couple of new albums over on the more melodic side of extreme metal — with some actual clean singing! Ah, but you know what happens to the best laid plans of mice and men (to quote Robert Burns, they “gang aft agley”).

So, one of our readers (“death’s embrace”) had tossed out a few band recommendations over the last few days, and we thought we’d give ’em a quick once-over before starting on those reviews we had planned. We did that — just a wee taste to see what the music was like — and promptly veered right off the rails and down into a big brier patch of nastiness.

We’re still picking thorns out of our butts, so the melodic music will have to wait another day or two. Today, we have a montage of the mayhem we discovered courtesy of that thorny detour from our appointed path. If you’re looking for metal about (and possibly played by) cannibalistic zombies, read on.

FACEBREAKER

We knew what we were getting into with this band. If the name “Facebreaker” hadn’t been enough of a tip-off, we also had the following note from “death’s embrace” as a clue: “IMHO, a great death metal band from Sweden. Plus all the songs on their last album are about zombies.” Well, who could resist that kind of teaser? Not us!

The band’s latest album crawled out of the grave in 2008 with the title Dead, Rotten and Hungry, and the songs are indeed about zombies, with such mouth-watering titles as “Slowly Rotting”, “Night of the Burning Dead”, and Unanimated Flesh”. And the sound is indeed classic Swedish death metal, in the vein of Dismember and Grave. It’s punishing, but with meaty hooks — rusty chainsaws spinning at full speed and flinging gore in every direction, plus suitably demented guttural vocals. We like it!  (more after the jump, including music to stream . . .) Continue reading »