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Maceration – It Never Ends…

maceration – it never ends…

Info

Maceration’s sole album ‘A Serenade Of Agony’ is an album that divides Death Metal fans: considered as a true yet forgotten classic of Old School Death Metal by some, but looked upon as just an average Death Metal of which there were many around the early 90’s. Regardless of your personal taste and point of reference, ‘A Serenade Of Agony’ has seen several reissues over the three decades that has since passed, so after all these years, and a still woefully unsuccessful Death Metal career by the Invocator guitarists, there does seem to be interest in the band.

Perhaps prompted by Maceration’s unsatisfying end in the mid-1990’s, the band was revived in 2021. However, seemingly not all former members were equally convinced of the necessity of bring the band back to life, which prompted Lars Bangsholt and Jacob Schultz to recruit new musicians for their Maceration. This succeeded in 2022 and they immediately started finishing their new material. It is notable, by the way, that filling the vacancy for vocalist must not have gone all that smoothly, or they thought it was a good idea to ask Dan Swanö again to sing on the new album, just as he had done many years earlier, under the name Day Disyraah, with ‘A Serenade Of Agony’). And, seemingly, Swanö was up for another ride with his Danish friends.

The result is actually surprisingly good. Without wishing to detract from ‘A Serenade Of Agony’ or in any way be disrespectful to that album or the musicians involved at the time, ‘It Never Ends…’ outshines it in every way. The riffs are catchier, the drums are better and the overall sound is much more satisfying. That production, which was also largely in the hands of Swanö, is a lot fuller and thus much more supportive of the music. It is also notable that they did not opt for a slick and very modern sound, like many those reuniting bands opt for, instead ‘It Never Ends…’ sounds very authentic, but at the very same time has much more punch than ever before. And to top things nicely off, even Swanö’s vocals sound as brutal as he ever did back in those wonderful early 90’s. The music itself is largely following the path the band took on some thirty years ago, which all together makes ‘It Never Ends…’, nice and riff-heavy, filled to the brim with splendid song writing, making the album a near-perfect example of how to come back after so many years in a such an excellent fashion.

With that, the album fully lives up to its title, it may have laid dormant for a few decades, but Maceration is back and better than ever: it never ends…