Around the World: Sverige

 

 

SWITCH TO POLISH

About the Swedish phenomenon, everything was written, filmed, documented and dissected, to the point of becoming a religious cult.

Why then I decided to write about them? For easy popularity and clicks of course. Sweden is a peculiar country, as like aby other Scandinavian country, it's filthy rich (these viking raids sure were profitable) , with insular, closed communities, and shops with a huge distances between each other. In other words, financially prosperous, but culturally piss-poorus. No wonder that their youth felt like slashing themselves out of boredom, but instead decided to slash the ears of the listeners with their guitars.

Everything extreme Made in Sweden started with their Crust Punk. Basically each future Deafmetalhead started their listening adventure with this option, and many of these bands later formed some notable Death Metal acts. Sweden, just like Britain, didn't really have their Thrash Metal craze, preferring to just jump straight into the next stage. It doesn't mean that they didn't have their own notable plates (Hexenhaus, Mezzrow, old Tribulation - to not confuse with the modern one), but c'mon, nobody really considers it a cult classic.

What saved Sweden from irrelevance was my beloved Death Metal, which in their way had these characteristic aforementioned Crust / Hardcore leanings, namely, really low, downtuned guitars reaching chainsaw levels. That's also what made famous bands like Entombed and Carnage / Dismember.

The success of these bands, combined with the rising popularity of that one studio in Stockholm resulted in a massive explosion of this style, which still lasts till today, with maybe some small breaks. But that's not the end of the story, as Swedish crews had a desire to push the style even further, albeit this time they smelled the stench of money Death 'n' Roll, or Melodic Death Metal as a trend also started there, however, truth be told, both styles were started by Carcass, but then again, in this band there was a Swedish guy too, so the UK-SWE connection was still going strong.

Black Metal rebellion didn't really stop the hype, quite the opposite, it got converted to Swedish standards. I'm talking about Dissection & Sacramentum, who developed their own formula. There's also this big four of the more standard Black Metal, namely Marduk, Setherial, Dark Funeral and Lord Belial. Thing is, just like Norwegians are incapable of playing Metal without including even small hints of their trademark Black Metal, Swedes also can't play Black Metal without having any elements of Death Metal. Because of that I prefer to call it Swedish Blackened Death Metal instead.

Other genres in Sweden also exist, like Symphonic Metal (Therion), Grindcore (Carbonized, Regurgitation), Doom Metal (Serpent), or Gangsta Death Metal (Soils of Fate). Last, but not least, Swedes also started this weird trend of extreme bands wearing "balaclavas". I'm pointing fingers towards Murder Corporation, who were followed by a classic Dutch band, Houwitser.

Revival of Swedeath is happening each decade and this style is always in favor among all Metal audiences, even if I myself got fed up with it long time ago. With that said, Sweden is the undisputed capitol of Death Metal, equal to Florida, despite overpowering them long time ago. Quantity wise, maybe only Germans have more stuff released worldwide (USA is a different topic, which I will analyze in the future, it's not as big as one would think of).

And that's it, I'm done.