Sjukdom

Lifelover absolutely whooped ass throughout their entire career, from their poppy debut, Pulver, to their final destination, Sjukdom. When you play this album, you'll notice the change in sound from all the other albums. Pulver, Erotik, and Konkurs went for a punk-like sound in their songs, but here, Sjukdom sounds absolutely pissed. I'd say it's even heavier than Dekadens, too. Let's get into it.

Before I talk about the album, I'd like to note that this is their last album because Jonas "B" Bergqvist would die of an overdose shortly after this album was made. The band would split up in respect to B, and Kim Carlsson would go on to establish Hypothermia with the remaining members. Goddamnit, dude, if only we had time machines. R.I.P Jonas Berqvist. Let's move to the review.

The instruments here are amazing, as always. The drums are still from a program, but they sound cool. The guitars sound heavier and crunchier here, as if they're pent-up. It sounds angry, in an amazing way. B's piano also contributes a ton here, as seen on Doften Av Tomhet (The Smell of Emptiness) and Horans Hora (Whores' Whore). They add so much to the rhythms and melodies that are already beautiful. As the reviewer below me said, it's just hard to imagine the songs without them, which I 100% agree with. Time for vocals.

Kim Carlsson's vocals here are actually given quite the range, from guttural (Horans' Hora) to pretty much speaking (Bitterjluv Kakofoni). Either way, the vocals fit the song perfectly every time. They have a nice sound of desperation to them, too. Nothing bad to say about them. Kim's voice goes well with his lyrics.

All in all, Sjukdom is a great piece for those who want some heavy, angry DSBM, and I'd recommend it to anyone who likes DSBM or has even heard of it.

Lifelover's last release is among my favorites by the band. It has a satisfying despondent sound, multiple interesting experiments and is overall consistent, containing no weak songs. So, it is both good and bad the band's story ended here (good because it's always better to have a cool album as the band's last record and bad because who knows what else they could've released if it wasn't for B's death).

"Sjukdom" features every single beloved element of Lifelover's music – creepy audio samples, clean guitars, desperate vocals, cool-sounding Swedish song titles and lyrics and an immensely atmospheric artwork. One element is developed better than ever before, though, it being the keyboards. It is my impression that they are used much more frequently than on the other albums and most of the time very solid melodies are produced. The piano passage of the first track, "Svart galla", for example, is an essential and the best part of the song, without which it wouldn't be nearly as remarkable. The keyboards of "Expandera" and "Doften av tomhet" are also brilliant and, again, it's hard to imagine those songs without them. Even when the keyboards don't play a huge part in the melody (like on "Horans hora" or "Totus Anctus"), they still fit it and never feel redundant, so B did a fantastic job in improving the already awesome and unique Lifelover style.

Kim's vocals are impeccable as always. I would say he used "growling" vocals more than on the band's other albums, most notably on "Totus Anctus" and "Horans hora". Aside from that, nothing to be said about his performance, most people would agree he is among the best DSBM vocalists (if not the best one).

The album's emotions, as always, vary from sadness and melancholy ("Nedvaknande", "Instrumental Asylum") to anger ("Led by Misfortune" and, as the title suggests, "Becksvart frustration") and pure insanity ("Bitterljuv kakofoni", "Karma"). There are mood shifts within songs, too. A perfect example of that would be "Totus Anctus" which starts with a bouncy danceable riff to then descend into a sinister interlude with an atmospheric sample of Kim talking, come back to the madness, return to a calmer mood with Kim's vocals intensifying over time and finally wither in a dark instrumental ending. A brilliant song structure, keeping the listener engaged and never becoming boring or predictable. My favorite song, "Svart galla", is also inconsistent in that sense, for it somehow incorporates anger, despondency and fear in its structure, with all parts of it being enjoyable and remarkable.

So, "Sjukdom" is a diverse release featuring excellent melodies, all shades of despair and hopelessness possible and classic Lifelover tools every fan will appreciate. A DSBM masterpiece that will always be remembered.

This is truly an amazing record and a mix of atmosphere, emotions, and rawness for every fan of extreme music.

Okay, so here we have Lifelover's best (imo) and last album. Let me start by rating their new approach behind this. The cover looks amazing, they have hired a guest musician, released an awesome collector's edition, and just generally it can be seen that they have put lots of work on this project, and music-wise it takes some different approaches in the sound, giving it that fleshed-out feel. I would say a perfect swan song for the band.

The instruments are just great here with high quality production and perfect melodies. The guitars just feel so sharp, creating those waves of noise while still being metal, hard-hitting and leaving some space for the bass, which for its part does exactly what you would expect, making no mistakes or disappointments. Vocals are done by a few vocalists on this record, varying from spoken, growls, and screams all from different people. They are just amazing and give more color and help shape the mood. Some of the songs also include quotes, both recorded and taken from various places, which fit well as an intro or outro here and there. The keyboards are one of my favorite parts about this. They are just so well thought out, being right where they have to be, making cool effects and maintaining those simple, yet beautiful melodies and adding yet another layer to the sound. The drums are made from a drum machine and I think it was on purpose. They have shown what they can do with a real drummer and used one live, but I think the strict sound of the computer-generated ones just appeals more to that record as a whole.

It's original, experimental, and yet easy to love, and is a perfect album to check out if you are new to the band. My favorite songs should be Led By Misfortune, Totus Anctus, Karma, and Homicidal Tendencies, but the other ones still don't go that far back. It can fit all kinds of moods and will still be a classic after many years, leaving a mark for experimental extreme metal.

“Sjukdom” is the sixth Lifelover recording out of six. Originally released in 2011 as their fourth and last full-length, it features the return of Lifelover's trademark drum machine (the previous EP, "Dekadens", is the only Lifelover recording with a real drummer), and a band composed by B (guitars, vocals, piano, bass), ( ) (vocals) and LR (additional vocals).

"Sjukdom" is by far the heaviest Lifelover recording, almost entirely electric - while their previous efforts made large use of acoustic breaks (or even entirely acoustic songs), piano tunes, clean vocals and so on. Moreover, "Sjukdom" is also the most "professional" Lifelover album ever, with sounds that are pretty different from the raw recordings hearable on their debut album "Pulver"; the drum machine, though, is colder than ever, and it adds a general feeling of "detachment" to the whole album.

Anyways, two outstanding songs are featured on "Sjukdom": the opener Svart Galla is the first one, and it calls back the old Lifelover; even if the song is entirely electric and heavy, it makes great use of B's piano, which accompanies the guitar melody and ( )'s harsh vocals. The drum machine is pretty fast, but there is room for some changes of tempo and a nice instrumental part, which leads to a slow piano outro.

This said, the true masterpiece of the album, and of the whole Lifelover discography, is Expandera, whose touching and desperate lyrics has been written by ( ). The song follows an usual Lifelover pattern, starting with an astonishing guitar melody coupled with B's always brilliant piano, this time playing one of the most innovative and catchy melodies ever written by him. Expandera, though, features a speech (provided by some guest called P. G. on the booklet) over a slow, almost acoustic part that preludes to the resumption of the instrumental beginning of the track. At some point, before the end, we have an actual acoustic intermezzo with an intense speech (in English it would read as "so empty and cold in their ever expanding emptiness / just like the hole I carry within myself..").

Apart from these two masterpieces, the rest of "Sjukdom" is very heavy, always (except for a few songs) featuring an extremely fast drum machine - such as in Led by Misfortune, in which ( )'s vocals get close to a black metal style, or in Homicidal Tendencies, a track in which ( )'s painful screams are overwhelming, since the rest of the song features nothing of the Lifelover trademarks: no piano, no changes of tempo or abrupt swaps from acoustic to electric passages, no catchy guitar melodies. This is, unfortunately, a characteristic that spreads throughout the whole album, even if in songs like Nedvaknande we can still hear a great, swinging melody played by B's guitars.

The only instrumental track in the lot is Instrumental Asylum, and it follows at some extent the pattern of the old Original, thus repeating over and over some guitar tunes with some changes in the drum machine's layout and a nice acoustic, slow outro.

So, having written about the tracks I loved the most of "Sjukdom", we are still left with a large amount of tracks which - with the partial exclusion of the nice Karma and Resignation (which uses the melody of the old Vardagsnytt) - could be probably described as fillers, since they have no more the genius featured on the first Lifelover albums, nor they present some significant variations or inspired melodies whatsoever. Tracks like Utdrag are entirely acoustic - a rare thing in this album - but repetitive and pretty boring in the end.

"Sjukdom", though, apart from these not-so-brilliant episodes, is a great full-length among the extraordinary, wonderful and innovative Lifelover short career, and it is, in my opinion, a worthy conclusion to their career itself, prematurely interrupted due to B's tragic death some months after the release of this album. "Sjukdom" is thus recommended to everyone that loves Lifelover, but because of its heaviness, its excessive number of songs and its slight decrease of inspiration I would surely suggest to anyone who has never heard of Lifelover before to go and buy their first two full-lengths, true masterpieces of the entire musical world of the last years. After having accustomed to Lifelover's different styles and souls, for sure even "Sjukdom" will be more appreciated.

A much darker and more metal-sounding album than previous ones, "Sjukdom" sees the band maintaining its consistency as suppliers of depressive metal with a melodic pop bent. The metal part tends more towards thrash and a bit of death metal lite on tracks like "Svart Galla", "Led by Misfortune", "Totus Anctus" and "Karma" among others but apart from this and some ambient interludes that drop into a lot of songs unexpectedly, "Sjukdom" isn't a major musical advance for Lifelover and features as much catchy pop as the other albums. There's still plenty of black metal roar in the buzzing guitars and the solo piano tickling is still plaintive and doleful. Though the music is hard-edged enough from the melodic thrash that occasionally pushes Lifelover close to Metallica territory, the band's sound is very clean and clear.

Perhaps the best thing about "Sjukdom" is the vocals which are wild, hoarse and gabbling, as though the singer - there may be more than one singer at work here - was becoming mentally unhinged and disordered. On "Totus Anctus" and "Becksvart Frustration", the singing comes close to death metal gruff in line with the songs' angry riffing. On other tracks the voices can be ragged and desperate as if the vocalist is afraid of falling permanently into madness. Then there's "Horan Hora" where the cookie monster soundalike singing veers towards bombastic grandstanding and puts the whole song in danger of falling into camp.

Most songs are short and never really seem to develop much. Definite moods and atmospheres that might be associated with particular tracks and make them stand out are never realised as a result. The music gallops along at more or less the same pace when some songs should be slow to allow the despair and blackness of a depressed person to be savoured by listeners. A lot of found sounds and spoken voice recordings appear on tracks throughout the album but I sometimes get the impression that the "experimental" non-music elements are included simply to spice up the music and compensate for the lack of very distinctive riffs and melodies, not because they're essential to the songs and are a natural outcome of them. Songs often carry on for a while then stop suddenly for a radio recording or an ambient interlude to drop in which is why I get this niggling feeling. There's a bit of coolness, a kind of distance in the music, that seems to stop Lifelover from being really involved in the subject matter of their songs - sure, there's plenty of moaning, howling and screaming in several tracks and the music can get very angry but the emotion doesn't come over as really heartfelt or wrenching. There's plenty of grit but there's also a kind of sterility in the recording.

Not many songs stand out but I single out "Homicidal Tendencies" for its heavy thrashy quality and the wild singing, "Utdrag" for being the only track with a loner urban-blues desolation mood and "Bitterljuv Kakofoni" which is a quietly guarded and suspenseful piece with guitars way down in the mix and a drumbeat rhythm that perhaps should be a bit quieter and more muffled.

After hearing four Lifelover albums including this one, I see my wish that one day Lifelover would throw away their attachment to pop songs and just let rip with flowing black metal / post-rock / bluesy urban music with long howling voices, everything improvised with no straining for catchy hooks but just pure raw playing, must remain unfulfilled. Come on guys, you've already shown across several releases that you're good musicians with good ideas, now just go out on a limb and jump for it!

The last time I had the luxury of reviewing a Lifelover album, the outcome was highly disappointing, since I was hoping for an Erotik sound, but getting an even more mediocre Pulver sound.

Sigh…

Memories…yes, I remember the good days, sipping scotch and smoking a cigarette to the beautiful sounds of “Sweet Illness of Mine” and “Mental Central Dialog”. It was a depressing time, but a beautiful one. Those two words, in fact, are the two words that best describe the post-rock influenced black metal band from Stockholm. Fortunately, this time, I won’t bash this record at all, because it was goddamn amazing.

Remember Dekadens, the mediocre EP that was meant to tide you over since they had lost their drummer and hired a new one? I had said in fact, that this EP was unnecessary, and rather would have had them just wait. I retract that statement. Dekadens was needed to make you see the experimental side, which is what they moved farther towards, especially in this one. It’s not saying much to call Lifelover experimental or progressive, because that’s exactly what they are, but still, experimenting in an already experimental genre is kind of weird. Dekadens was showing that they could play strange(r), but still be good.

This album uses more of their Erotik sound (my heart fluttered as I typed that), but mixing that sound with both the follow up album, Konkurs, and their experimental album, Dekadens. It was awesome to hear them hit all sounds they have ever done. Soft? You got it on Expandera, arguably the most soothing track. Rough? Oh yeah - check out Svart Galla and Homicidal Tendencies (both which use really fast double bass and intangible screaming, thanks to Kim). The mix was weird, however, because it seemed to jump from emotion to emotion. Sad, happy, mad, sad, pissed, suicidal, homicidal, really joyous, sad…et cetera.

As following Konkurs, most of the tracks were either instrumental or had screaming. B rarely did his amazing clean vocals, which was a disappointment, but oh well, it was still great to hear Kim do more stuff. The drums were the only real new thing. Double Bass…in my Lifelover? I thought I was dreaming when I heard it, but I wasn’t. I had never heard them take this style. It was great.

Keyboards, guitars and bass followed the same suit as Konkurs and Erotik. Several guitar sounds, often doubletrack sounds, simplistic, but beautiful keys, bass being heard throughout, but fitting great with the guitar. It was an all around lovefest for the album.

I thoroughly enjoyed this (as if I haven’t already made that clear…). Pick up this record. It rivals the other two. Do it now, because I can see this selling fast.

I don't know if it's a symptom of my excess passion for music or a tangible conjuration of empathy, but every time a band I admire so much seems to grind to a halt, my heart simply shatters. Not to grow all emo on you, but this appears to be exactly what has occurred with Sweden's Lifelover upon their fourth full-length. Whereas each prior album detailed a minute but wondrous evolution in sorrow and atmosphere, culminating in the surreal and beautiful Konkurs in 2009 (which I still listen to on a regular basis), the process seems to have decayed in the writing of Sjukdom. The fact that the title for this album is 'sickness' is perhaps all too telling of its contents, because there's certainly there's a pox upon the creative muse here, and ultimately this album is more of the same...but far less...

Taken at simply a compositional level, it is a near doppelganger of its predecessors, with the same sense for driving guitars, wailing and insane, tortured vocals, and outside elements like pianos that are used to add additional seasoning to what might otherwise be entirely too simple writing. This formula has worked miracles in the past, through Erotik and especially Konkurs, but here it seems to limp along without provoking much compelling or curious content, and songs like "Svart Galla" and "Resignation" would not have been out of place a few years ago, but for whatever reason, they just don't leave a lasting impression here. I'm not sure if it's the cleaner, bruising production or just the fact that the notes don't configure themselves into patterns that access my memory banks, but I felt lost, like a young lad waiting for his favorite parent to pick him up at school and only being sent his annoying cousin.

Sjukdom is not entirely barren of different ideas for Lifelover, but when one of them is to call a song "Homicidal Tendencies" (is that funny?), I must ask who kidnapped the band's muse to torture her on the basement level of some suburban apartment complex? This is basically a mediocre thrash riff with some wild vocals and electronic components. There's always been a substrata of humor to the band's style, but ouch. "Totus Anctus" is disposable groove metal which only picks up during the segues into clean guitars and narrative; "Karma" just disposable groove/death metal which the piano at the climax cannot rescue; "Becksvart Frustration" a vapid punkish rhythm which is simply not good enough to propel the froglike vocals riding it; "Instrumental Anthem" far too literal; and "Led by Misfortune" just sounds like a Pyogenesis outtake from 1995.

The good cuts here are thus sadly outnumbered. I enjoyed "Horans Hora", which is the longest on the album, elegant and doomed without any needless excess. "Nedvaknande" has perhaps the best single riff on the album, a longing construction with sexy, enthusiastic melodies behind the verse narration and random groans. "Bitterljuv Kakofoni" is also pretty good, a somber piece with samples and steady, syringe sucking drums, and "Expandera" is somewhat acceptable, with a fine level of sadness where the piano and guitar chords collide. But when compared to the great set of songs on the last full-length, even these moments of respite from the mediocre environs seem themselves a dash underwhelming. ( ) is hit or miss; often manifesting the same charisma I've enjoyed in years, but often becoming a near caricature of himself. The variation of the album is not a negative trait, but so few of the experiments towards a more pedestrian metallic territory pan out.

Sjukdom does not represent Suckdom, because there are enough ligaments conjoining its joints to create the illusion of quality, but it's the first hurdle I've yet heard in the band's career, and it's just not impressive. Hopefully they can shake these brambles out of their breeches soon and rise once more from refraction to revelation.

-autothrall
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com