Album Review: Disrupted – “Stinking Death” (Death Metal)

Written by Kep

The old adage says that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, and there are many corners of the metal scene that prove the saying true. There’s a reason that the sounds of second wave black metal and OSDM and trad heavy metal endure, in some cases 50+ years beyond their first appearances: it’s because they’re damn good sounds, and 21st-century bands that honor them (well) are usually rewarded for their efforts. Disrupted are proof positive: they’ve been playing good old Swedish death metal with a touch of d-beat influence for well over a decade now and it hasn’t gotten old or stale yet. 

Stinking Death is the Ludvika natives’ third full-length outing, following records in 2015 and 2020 (spaced a pleasingly symmetrical five years apart). That sophomore record, Pure Death, was a particularly good listen, 34 minutes of vicious chainsaw riffs packaged into tight songs that never outstayed their welcomes, and the album became one of my go-tos while I was stuck at home in the first year of COVID. All you can really ask of a band like this is that they deliver more of the same, and I’m pleased to report that this new effort doesn’t disappoint. 

Disrupted’s calling card is that old school mentality, showcased in big, gnarly HM-2 chainsaw tone that permeates the texture top to bottom. That inherent noisiness is cranked to 11 here: the guitars have less of a sharp edge than on Pure Death and more of a rough, mangling wideness. Think having your leg sawed off by a two-inch wide industrial chainsaw instead of a standard yard use model. It’s thick, mean sound that fills the speakers, almost to the point of losing its definition and becoming a wash of sound at times—almost. The bass is an enormous steel cable buzz beneath, the drums (played by new drummer Daniel Liljekvist, formerly of Katatonia) have plenty of pop, and frontman Mikael Hanni has a monstrous (and pleasantly intelligible) grisly roar that stands up to the assault. 

The songs follow an age old, tried and true formula: break off a wicked riff with a bit of melody to start, then break things down to a straight ahead chug or driving rhythm for the verse. Go verse/chorus/verse/chorus, reusing that main riff or a closely related one, maybe toss in a fresh rhythmic idea to keep it interesting, then bridge to the final chorus with either new lyrics, a solo, or both. It’s not groundbreaking but it works; there’s comfort in the predictability and it leaves little room for the songwriting to meander. By its nature, though, some tracks do end up feeling pretty similar, especially given that Disrupted favors a pretty slim range of tempos. Take “True Death” and “Vile Impalement”, for example: similar flying main riffs, similar tempos, and even similar passages of jabbing syncopated chugs that break into the texture. The band really only breaks their own mold once, with the grand gloomy podding of “Funeral Vomit”— it’s damn good—and I for one think the record could’ve used one more doomy mood-breaker in its style. The songs are crisply written for the most part (“Deflesh the Dead” is the only exception, with its over-repetition of the title lyrics and awkward fade-out) but despite their consistent quality they do have a tendency to run together a bit.

That complaint would be a bigger one if the riffs didn’t go so damn hard, but luckily this album is a series of motorized power tools to the face. The work from Thomas Liljekvist and Johan Kvastegård is grim, scowling violence, sawing and hewing and grinding relentlessly. Their main riffs favor your classic jagged rolling hills of tremolo-picked pseudo-melody (“Choke on the Cross”, “True Death”, “Vile Impalement”, “Necromantic Breeding”, “Spew”), and the sheer energy and power of those riffs will have Swedeath fans all hot and bothered. This axework is fucking ROBUST; even the straight ahead under-verse lines feel like they could flatten you, and the periodic solos are devious things, wriggling like snakes with venomous twists across the harmony. Some of the guitars’ finest moments are more subtle, though, like the bits of eerie melody that float atop the chaos in “Coffin Breath” and the tight chromatic turns that tail off from the fat chugs in the opening of “A Grave Ablaze”.  

THE BOTTOM LINE

It’s easy to call a spade a spade here: Stinking Death is a quality hunk of roaring chainsaw death, featuring enormous riffs that call back to Swedish titans like Grave and Entombed. While it won’t win any awards for originality, Disrupted’s newest effort brings the old school violence in a way that’s as satisfying as OSDM fans have come to expect from one of the most consistent bands in the scene.