If you were to stop listening to Swedish Undivine on Into Dust just a couple of tracks in, you could come away with the same impression I did on my first listen. From Sickness and Disease and to large extent Deadbells are reliving the glory days of Naglfar’s Vittra and Dissection’s first pair of albums. That same fast, borderline out of control blasting beat and those glorious frozen melodies certainly bring back memories.

My piece of advice, if I could give any, is not to stop there, as further digging deeper into the album will uncover that, while Undivine is influenced by a host of extreme acts who came before them, the Swedes are not putting it all in one style basket. As a result, they manage to meld their inspirations and explorations of the days of blackened death metal past to create a flowing and enjoyable extreme melodic album.

The aforementioned Deadbells grows a touch cleaner, a bit more epic and could give modern Dark Funeral some run for its money. Straightforward Swedish school (read, Marduk) shrill black metal is allowed to become more expansive on Pain is the Cleaner, or to acquire some distinct bottom end in addition to Naglfar/Dissection harmonies on Sowing the Seeds of Downfall.

My favorite cuts on Into Dust, however, became the ones which deviated from the central template the most. My Name is Legion emerges from the doomy depths only to explode into downtuned riffs found in the Dutch death metal school (God Dethroned). The closing Amon Amarth melody completes the picture. Militaristic threnodious march Wake Up to Another Nightmare has as much to do with black metal as it does with Judas Priest You’ve Got Another Thing Coming in its main riff. The big epic chorus with its melodic tremolo brings this song home. I Dream Death and the closing title track paint a vivid apocalyptic scene. Arranged very much in the vein of Hypocrisy wall of sound on that band’s self-titled album, these tracks aren’t fast, but they are impact-laden with their rolling double bass choruses, a touch of keyboard to saturate the melody and overall scary end-of-life impression. It is on these tracks where vocalist Tommy Holmer also entirely unleashes, ripping his throat into thin shreds.

While displaying a good deal of talent, Undivine still seems to be searching for the sound they can call distinctly theirs. In the meantime, the pair of albums they put out in the saturated scene do nothing to diminish their credentials. Into Dust is certainly pleasing, even if it does not break any entirely new ground.