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This is the second full-length album from Swedish Death Metal band Mykorrhiza, who seem to be trying to fuse the various schools of Swedish DM together into a single sound. This is a pretty good album, but it lacks any really strong characteristics to make it stand above the rest of the pack, and it has a few stigmata that drag it down.

Mykorrhiza start with a good solid base of old-style Swedish DM, mixing in only the occasional melodic flourish to bring the melodeath crowd to mind. When this band is blasting and crunching they do pretty good – nothing stunning, but good solid Death Metal. But one seemingly every song they have to add these more cleanly-sung parts, and there is more than a touch of nu-metal sound coming through on these. The clean vocals sound very James Hetfield, and the standard bullshit DM lyrics are not improved by intelligibility.

This band is trying to do something a bit different, but adding metalcore or mallcore touches is not the way to go. Northern Remembrance is okay, but it strays too far from the Death Metal path for my tastes, and isn't good enough to succeed on its own.