Stalking amongst the bursting of graves as worm-eaten corpses go on rising in the night we find the blood-fed ghasts inhabiting Stockholm, Sweden based death metal duo HARROWED peering shine-eyed from a distance in recalling the multi-generational re-revival of Swedish ‘old school’ death metal within this sharply cut and well-stylized debut full-length album. ‘The Eternal Hunger‘ isn’t necessarily a death n’ roll record in purpose but rather in expression of those core ideas wherein their own interest in heavy rock and hardcore punk help to balance the temperamental discharging of classic death metal sounds. Steeled by impressive sound design and a firm grasp of United States death metal’s influence upon Scandinavian formae these fellowes produce an above-average lean into the late-era tradition of the sub-genre’s earliest scratching above the underground circa ’93.

Harrowed formed via vocalist/drummer Adam Lindmark (ex-Morbus Chron) at some point before recruiting fellow Dead Lord member bassist/guitarist Tobias Alpadie (Vak) and recording their first demo (‘MMXXI‘, 2021) an independent digital release that was eventually released on tape. Their style aesthetically resembled the nostalgic revisionism of the ‘old school’ death metal reprisal of the mid-to-late 2000’s and more specifically the sort of bands that’d returned to the roots of the Stockholm-area sound to its original tropes. The three songs on that demo resembled a rocking-and-wheeling exaggeration (re: “Reap the Storm”) of the otherwise simpler idealism of the late 80’s ’til early 90’s transgression, not unlike Death Breath or Bastard Priest in spirit. It was a great tape, solid enough nostalgia that’d warranted a more official release as Side B on a split with German deathcrust band Phantom Corporation a year later. Expectations heading into ‘The Eternal Hunger‘ amounted to an above-average early 90’s Entombed clone with better leads.

The bleached pile of bones cast asunder met those expectations, reductive as they might seem, in delivering an umpteenth generational refinement of the hard rock braced soul given to death metal in the early 90’s. That is to say that ‘The Eternal Hunger‘ bears a different sort of death n’ roll-adjacent result, a revision of that core connectivity between slow-swinging heavy rock and hardcore punk informed structures applied to the thrashing death metal at the peak of death metal’s breach beyond the underground. Beyond the speed metallic roll of opener “Bayonet” you’ll find “The Haunter” and later on “The Reins” generally resemble a different ratio of punkish death metal to rock structured movement than the typical post-‘Wolverine Blues‘ growling rock record and they do so by retaining focus on the riff as the rooting for each moment.

The first three or so songs Harrowed introduce here reinforce that core idea by tunneling it out before finding those bigger swinging Fripp-like grooves when pulling out of the fray. “Ultra Terrene Phantasmagoria” (and “Formaldehyde Dreaming” later on) is probably the most exemplar piece in this regard as a simple enough ~3 minute arc which accentuates the riff developed beyond the ~1:14 minute mark as its key spectacle. Though their song structures are simple enough in passage there is some meaningful link developed between speed metal ‘tude, Swedeath-associated transitional riffcraft, and the United States death metal that’d initially influenced it (Autopsy, Master, et al.) though the result is never as flatly slabbed out into hardcore punk simplicity a la Repulsion or Slaughter.

Production values from Robert Pehrsson (Death Breath, ex-Runemagick) here are crisp but capable of spacious rupture wherein the drum presence is realistic with a balcony-seated point of view depicted. Harrowed‘s guitar tone might be one of their best features beyond that drum sound, a snappier thrashing temperament which resembles the rumble of the Sunlight studios era of chainsaw’d thunder but carries its own well-contained nuclear fission rather than the usual bland cranked to eleven cloneage. “Blood Covenant” shows the versatility of this rhythm guitar sound when its initially thrashing push is tasked with meeting the psychedelia coughed-but-kicking spirit of ‘Sleepers in the Rift‘ its opening rally.

While their general verve has been clearly mapped at this point, ~3-4 minute death metal songs with one distinct peaking moment near the mid-point, each side of ‘The Eternal Hunger‘ features at least one more elaborately constructed piece including the aforementioned “The Haunter” and album closer/title track “The Eternal Hunger”. Harrowed‘s most interesting work (for my own taste) lies in the embrace of slower stepped or mid-paced works which allow their hand to wander a bit more than the odd ~minute-long break, carrying an almost doomed quality when slinking through. I wouldn’t suggest any one song here is filler, the whole deal is a concise and well-congealed ~36 minute ride which is tightly writ from every angle, some of this album’s moment-to-moment impact is tamed by repetition and simplicity. A song like “The Reins” reinforces the identity of the band but carries no weight per the momentum already established throughout the full listen, for example. A moderately high recommendation.

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