Forever to Be Vanished There In

Have you ever thought about how many great and unknown bands are there in the metal world? And not only at the present, but also in the past? Bands, that for example never managed to record an album, but did release few, more or less interesting, demos? Hundreds I guess. Here I may have a chance to introduce you to one of many good Swedish demo tapes, from a very little known band ABHOTH.

This material was recorded quite early, in 1991, at famous SUNLIGHT Studio. Definitely it was great decision and huge improvement from the debut demo ABHOTH did. To tell the story short - "A Matter of Splatter", first demo was a failure. I didn't like the songwriting on it and the production was terrible. With SUNLIGHT, this second ABHOTH demo got a sound it deserves. Clean and aggressive, with crispy guitars and great drums. There's nothing I can moan about; "Forever to be Vanished" sounds just as good as the best Swedish death metal demo tapes from that time.

And finally the music – bacause ABHOTH’s line up has changed drastically since the debut demo, so has changed the music. There’re no grind core elements left at all and the music is pure Swedish death metal is very melodic vein, so ABHOTH sounds now like completely different band. To some point I can risk a theory that ABHOTH was one of the first melodic death metal bands from Sweden, similar to such bands like DESULTORY, CEMETARY, GOREMENT. I absolutely love these songs’ structures, based on strong melodic background, but which never lack aggression and great feeling. Probably my favourite song is “Darkness Greets” – fuckin’ classic. It starts with slow motif with wonderful solo, but then the song goes into more aggressive and faster riffing. But the song is quite long, goes for almost 7 minutes, so there’s more to come, like a cool melodic slowing down in the mid part and lots of headbanging stuff. But to be honest, every song of the demo is great. I know there are only three tracks in here, but I love them all and could listen to it all the time. Just listen to the beginning of the “Recantation Of The Forsaken”. Then comes the fantastic title song, which is probably the most important track in ABHOTH history, as it was also recorded on a different session for a SLAYER Magazine compilation (which was never released). I can understand why ABHOTH has chosen this song. It’s probably the most aggressive of all their songs, it’s very fast and uncompromising, straight forward and not as much melodic as other songs. And what about the guitar solos? They’re amazing! I’m not quite sure, which of ABHOTH guitarists played them, but he must have been one talented chap! Only the vocals could be better, but from the other hand they’re not so awful to destroy such a great music. No!

To conclude then - this is definitely one of the best Swedish demos from the beginning of the 90’s and surely the best ABHOTH recording I had a chance to listen to. A shame I couldn't find an original tape anywhere, so I can't even say a word about the lyrics, but I hope that one day, with all these re-releases of old demos tapes that happen nowadays someone will think also about ABHOTH demo and put it on EP or CD.