Expurgate is one of those obscure bands from Sweden that was part of the first wave of Swedish Death Metal and never made it to the level of Entombed, Grave or Dismember. The band was formed in Stockholm in 1990 and disbanded after one demo called ‘Forbidden Fear’, released in 1991. The members of Expurgate were later active in bands like Svartsyn, Chalice and Unpure. The Dutch label Nomad Snakepit Productions is releasing a compilation that consists of this demo and an unreleased one from 1992.
The first two tracks, ‘Rotten Human Flesh’ and ‘Hypnosis’, offer a classic Swedish Death Metal sound with galloping drums, buzzing guitars and vocals in the vein of Nihilist or Carnage. The third track ‘From the Past’ is slower and doomy in the beginning, then going into a faster mode. A cover version of Carcass’ ‘Genital Grinder’ follows, and here the sound gets considerably worse.
The sound of the first three tracks is raw but listenable; after that, the rest of the tracks seem to be taken from some rehearsals, and I did not enjoy them that much because of the really low sound quality. If you put that aside, ‘Nynas Death’ is an interesting music release just because you can discover a band that has fallen into obscurity and was long forgotten before this release.
If you are into such underground records, then this one may be a curious listen. Otherwise, Expurgate is nothing special compared with other names of the Swedish Death Metal underground from the beginning of the ’90s.
