Desolate Grave is the name of this solo-project by David “Pos” Mauritzon, who has also been in a few other bands, of which the oddly named Belarus Beaver, despite never having heard it, attracts me the most in a crazy way. With all his other current and previous bands Mauritzon has explored the realms of Death Metal and Doom Metal. With Desolate Grave he seeks to combine those into something new.
With ‘Det Sista Steget’, which from Swedish translates to ‘The Last Step’, he ironically takes his first step. And although the music on this eighteen and a half minutes clocking EP seems a bit of a strange mash up at first, it starts to make sense after a few spins. ‘Det Sista Steget’ combines fairly standard Doom/Death Metal with some distinctive touching symphonic elements. If we were to drill things down to its basic elements, the closest comparison would be Shape Of Despair on their first two best albums (‘Shades Of…’ (2000) and ‘Angels Of Distress’ (2001)). Even Mauritzon’s vocals are equally compelling and heavy as Pasi Koskinen (both ex-Shape Of Despair and ex-Amorphis). The main difference with Shape Of Despair, however, is twofold. First of all, Desolate Grave is more bombastic and symphonic in approach, not all too far removed from the sound that a lot of Black Metal bands adapted around the turn of the millennium. Think of bands like Morgul, Diabolical Masquerade, Diabolique or even Dimmu Borgir. The second and most obvious difference is that with Desolate Grave, Mauritzon has delivered a very interesting EP that has much more to offer than Shape Of Despair’s dull and uninspiring last work.
