Desultory - Bitterness

Desultory’s Bitterness was released amongst the second wave of Swedish Death Metal, back in 1993. A departure, although not entirely, from their debut Into Eternity, Bitterness sees the band embracing a new very dense sound, darker, more melodic and even incorporating some doom metal elements into their sound. Lyrically speaking, the album is very depressed – concerned with matters of emotional distraught (hey their name isn’t Desultory for nothing) musically though, most of the album is mid to up-tempo and not typical death metal (although a few songs are still 100% death metal “Among Mortals” stands out) as most of the songs feature a verse-chorus-verse structure. The vocals are something totally different – the typical rasp or death grunt is replaced with a surprisingly distinguishable vocal style, it’s a very painful growling moan yet still understandable, reflective of the bleak content of Bitterness. Like a lot of Swedish Death Metal bands of the time, the band chose to produce this masterpiece at Sunlight Studios – So you have “that” typical production sound - the low-fi dense fuzzy guitar sound only adds an extra density to an already dark-souled album. Some of my favorites include the perfect mid tempo opener “Life Shatters,” “The Closing Eye” for its remarkable melodies and the painfully catchy “Bleeding” This is a unique and different spin on Death Metal – more accessible perhaps, but definitely more reflective and probably one of the most overlooked metal albums ever recorded.

please watch the video for Winter
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvRNV6gbNmA