An out-of-the-ordinary album in many ways, mirrored by the unusual manner in which I acquired it. An actual CD, actually bought, from an actual record shop. Mainly an impulse buy because the cover is pretty, and because Morbus Chron’s debut Sleepers in the Rift was a good, if not massively exciting, example of old school death metal. Interesing how this changed my attitude towards it. If it were one of hundreds of electronic promos, it might have been forgotten after a listen or so. But as it was, I actually persevered with it. I put it on in the car, doing the housework, walking down the street, in an effort to actually uncover all the value I could get from it. It has been a long time since I could really say that: reminds me of the experience of listening and relistening to Opeth’s Blackwater Park when it first came out, when I didn’t have the internet and could only afford to buy about one album a month.

And this is all just as well. Sweven is an innovative and sophisticated death metal record, and it takes some time for the listener to uncover its coherence. It has been frequently compared to the last album by Tribulation, which is probably my favourite release of the last few years. There are obvious similarities: young Swedish band who made a stir in the old school death metal scene with their debut, suddenly taking a left turn into ‘progressive’ territory on the follow-up. But in fact the character of the two albums is quite different: Formulas of Death, despite its complexity and dynamics, was basically laden with irresistible death metal hooks, immediately obvious on the first listen. Sweven is way more introverted. You have to actively get to know it.

This is partly because there are not many fireworks. It doesn’t have an especially wide dynamic range (so precluding the kind of ear-catching contrasts beloved of those pioneers of progressive death metal, Opeth), and there are not many bursts of sudden technicality (there aren’t even that many lead solos). Nonetheless, it is an intricate and complicated album, laden with great riffs, but ones which are used in quite a particular way. They are rarely, as in most cases, just repeated patterns around which a song (or sections of a song) is constructed. Instead, we have a twisting sequence of micro-hooks, assembled together with great care. Morbus Chron don’t hurl the listener around on Sweven; instead, songs step smoothly but restlessly from one idea to another, never festering in place but always coalescing into sudden grooves, harmonised melodies, or cantering thrash riffs, before moving on again. So, on Ripening Life , for example, there are all these surging little guitar lines that burst forward and melt into something else, before resurfacing again suddenly in a different register later on. Tracks here seek to manipulate the listener, frustrating the ear’s attempts to latch onto obvious hooks, but when the latter do materialise the impact is can be very powerful and often very tuneful- see instrumental closer Terminus, which is basically a particularly classy melodeath track. Then, after a few plays, everything seems to hang together coherently and you wonder why it sounded obscure or complicated at first. The vocals take a back seat in all of this, sometimes only having a couple of lines in a track, and sounding suitably distant, fitting the introverted and esoteric character.

As a result, on the first few attempts, this can feel almost peripheral; very easy to zone-out from. To go back to the Tribulation comparison, the latter is the complete opposite- it was ingenious because it managed to pack its epic arrangements with hooks that had instantaneous impact. The new incarnation of Morbus Chron, while it would never be confused with Chuck Schuldiner’s Death, seems to have the same kind of spirit as the latter on albums like Human. Not necessarily looking for immediacy, but to probe curiously at the edges of death metal. As such, Sweven, while offering a less irresistible onslaught, is maybe the more adventurous album; put together with such invention and care that it feels like it pushes death metal as an art forward. Unique album.