Spiritually Uncontrolled Art

Spiritually Uncontrolled Art is the most hellish technical death metal E.P to ever desecrate these ears. This is death metal incarnate - Raging and colossal, this decimates 99% of all 'technical' death metal I've listened to.

Kristian Wahlin's famous album cover artwork is what led me to look into this. That and my appreciation for old school Swedish death metal. With that said, this is not what I was expecting at all. While only just spanning over 17 minutes, this mini-album is something to be reckoned with. In these 17 minutes, Liers In Wait put to shame many, many bands of the past who claimed to play technical death metal. Another things Liers In Wait put huge emphasis on is utter destructive force and the abhorrent atmosphere death metal should carry. Death reigns.

There are a lot of different things going on, and so many bloody riffs, constantly changing(when are they the same?!)drum patterns that it may be difficult to digest at first. Especially seeing as the band never venture into blasturbation territory; Spiritually Uncontrolled Art remains firmly in the old school yet out of this world category. The album begins with an eerie noise which is quickly interrupted by harsh vocals and an amplitude of riffs. The first thing to touch on here is the insane amount of excellent riffs. Now I'm not particularly into thrash, so masses of riffs don't really evoke anything within me, but the way Liers In Wait mesh all these atypical riffs together, using them extremely sparingly(mostly they'll never repeat), is truly something to behold. The drumming is intense, inventive, technical and oh so rapidly changing. The vocals are a harsh semi-deep growl baring more similarities with American forebearers of the genre than fellow Swedish contemporaries. And yes, they actually sound “evil”. There's a minor use of tenebrous keys, which enhance an emotion or perfectly conclude a climax.

If I had to make a comparison, I'd say this sounds something(I use this term loosely)like Deicide's “Legion”, though it's far superior. Had Spiritually Uncontrolled Art contained three-four more songs, this would be THE shining example of brutal, technical and old school death metal. I also entirely agree that if one wants music that truly sounds abhorrent and dark, yet they dislike black metal, one should listen to this. Along with “The Winterlong”, “Fornever Laid To Rest”, “Passage Of Life” and “Across The Horizon” this remains one of the unsung heroes of Swedish death metal.