Gods Forsaken – In a Pitch Black Grave (Review)

This is the debut album from Swedish death metal horde Gods Forsaken.

As I’ve said many times in the past – sometimes only ugly, dirty, filthy old-school Swedish death metal will do. When you absolutely can’t go any longer without a hit of the good stuff, this is where bands like Gods Forsaken come in.

Yep, this is as old-school and as diseased as it gets, and I can’t help but love it. No apologies whatsoever. The chainsaw guitars just scream pure aural pleasure to me, and the steamroller riffs just won’t quit.

Apparently featuring members of Just Before Dawn, The Grotesquery, Blood Mortized, and Wombbath, it’s little wonder that this is a death metal band that know what they’re doing with the style.

The songs are well-written and easily enjoyable. Reinventing the wheel is not necessary with this kind of thing. All you need is passion, a talent for destruction, and plenty of volume. Gods Forsaken have all of this in spades, and In a Pitch Black Grave is effortless to enjoy.

The singer’s deep, guttural growls are a savage joy to listen to as he roars and screams across the tracks. He has quite the inhuman delivery, and I find his voice particularly satisfying. I also like that alongside the standard growls, he injects shades of personality into his voice via different inflections and the odd charismatic scream.

There’s absolutely no messing around here, just pure rotting death metal. It’s at times like this when you can stick yer fancy metal genres and innovative experimentation in a dark hole, as In a Pitch Black Grave has everything you need to thrash out and worship true death metal.

My only criticism of this album – why on earth did they wait so many decades to release it? I mean, it was surely recorded in the early 90s, right?

Right…?

In a world of ultra-saturated metal scenes and a huge amount of new releases every week, it would be so easy to overlook a tomb moss-covered gem like this. Don’t. Make sure you give this the listen it deserves.

SWEDISH DEATH METAL RULES!