Dig the name actually, sorta like a “Mr. Big” of death metal, one has to think, although Mr. Death is mostly comprised of cast-offs from Treblinka and Tiamat, so super group this is not. Anyhow, it’s a romp through retro Swedish death metal on Detached For Life, right down to the Sunlight Studios production job from Tomas Skogsberg, but that doesn’t account for a batch of surprisingly uninteresting songs
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Unlike Bloodbath (who might be the only band ever to figure out how to do retro death metal properly), Mr. Death fail to break through the barrier from when death metal becomes a dangerous nuisance rather than a blight of noise. And there’s a lot of boring noise here. Mostly, it’s third-tier riffage that early Entombed would thumb their noses at, save for the frenetic “Misery’s Womb,” which is a great Grave sound-alike. Outside of that, there’s nothing that would force one to put this in on favor of say, Pieces or Clandestine.
There’s been quite the deluge of retro/quasi-super groups of late and it’s becoming maddening. Detached For Life is listless, unengaging death metal that adds no value to anyone, anywhere, outside of perhaps the parties involved. Bleh.
www.myspace.com/misterdeathsweden
(This content originally appeared on Blistering.com)