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Been seeing this one around, and I had heard good things about Fleshcrawl, so I grabbed it. I think this is the debut for this German band that plays Swedish death metal, and I'm going to have to get their follow-up, because while this isn't even remotely original, it is a cool disc.

Bands that play good old NWSDM stuff like this are far from as common as they used to be, and the ones we do have (Like Dismember) kind of seem to have lost their enthusiasm for it, and don't have that spark anymore. Fleshcrawl may not be breaking any new ground, but at least they're having a good time, and they sound like they still mean it. This is a very retro-sounding recording, with no blastbeats, no weird instrumentation, no clean vocals or any of the other stigmata of much ‘modern' death metal. Fleshcrawl play midpaced, old-school odes to death and evil, and they have that cool Entombed-ey guitar tone, despite the fact that this wasn't recorded at Sunlight Studios.

The cover is pretty over the top, and that album title! Who do they think they are, Bal-Sagoth? The lyrics are your standard stuff, but with no satan-fixation or splatter-gore boredom. The song "Swords of Darkness" is an Exciter cover, and the liner notes go on a little rant about how cool Exciter used to be back in the day. It's a cool song too.

If you miss the good old days of Swedish death, then this is a sure bet for a fix. There's nothing here that hasn't been done a hundred times before, but Fleshcrawl do it up right with energy and conviction and some very cool riffage. At the end of the disc you may feel as if you've heard the same song ten times in a row, but it's good song and doesn't wear out its welcome. This album may not be original, but originality is overrated, and it's not what I want from my death metal anyway. With the NWSDM tide long receded, bands like this are few and far between, and I for one am glad for the ones we have. Fleshcrawl get my vote.