Label: Independent
Release date: January 31st, 2025
Finland is one of those countries whose scene is, and I have feeling that always was, somewhat underrated. The exception is only black metal one, but even here this is its northern neighbor-land which is associated with such music. Anyway, Guts doesn’t play anything that has something to do with the aforementioned genre. Of course, this is metal and it’s an extreme one, but I still think not too many Death Metal fans know, and much less have heard, Demigod, Convulse or Demilich. The evidence for me was the number of people who entered gigs of the two last ones I listed. That was also quite sad for me that most of us grew up, in the musical sense, in the nineties.
Guts is a much younger ensemble than the ones whose names, what happened maybe even for the very first time in case of review I write, I wrote a few lines before. And this isn’t the only difference between them. Guts was born as a band in 2020. Well, honestly only the vocalist and one of the guitarists (Jaakko) were in the world at the time when the above-mentioned debuted phonographically. The second one is the place of origin. Contrary to Finnish death metal gods Guts comes from the oldest city of their country – Turku, which has also, like a lot of Finnish cities, a Swedish name.
Anyway, “Nightmare Fuel” is the second full-length and at the same time stuff, as you know, I don’t count one-song singles released online, of the ensemble. This is quite old stuff, by the way. I mean, the date of premiere took place January 31st when Morbid Chapel Records released both CD and digital version. On the same day, the band itself did the same – “Nightmare…” was uploaded to their, let’s call it, private profile on the portal I mentioned many times before, too. You can also buy a cassette released February 28th by Iron Fortress Records. Well, it was a limited edition, but I somehow think, even if it can be wishful thinking, that they’re still available.
Ok, but let’s finally talk about music itself. I know I have already given you an overall picture of what you should expect from Finns. But at the same time, we all know perfectly well that death metal, even if we’re talking only about old-school ones, is quite a general concept. At the same time, it says as much as I don’t have to write here about riffs and general structure of the songs. It’d surely make my scribble longer and maybe even it seems more professional, but meaningless due to the fact who’s reading these words. Well, I hear that the creativity of Turku’s residents is quite eclectic, there’re a lot of influences and this isn’t possible in my opinion to classify them. I mean, say something like: they play in quite typical Swedish, American or any other style. I mean, just American and Swedish touches are strong here, but also, what’s for me a natural thing, Finnish one. I hear some similarities with “World Without God” or even “Slumber of Sullen Eyes”, but also some differences. Anyway, the tempo is mostly the middle one. Of course, guys speed up here and there for a while, but above all, they focus on brutality based on crushing your bones and mind heaviness.
To make it short, you’ll find on “Nightmare Foul” everything that pure old-school death metal should have – especially if you like its slightly more demanding variety! This is absolutely worth spending your money on it and in my opinion if you’re a fan of Death Metal, you just must have this stuff (in format which’s the most accurate for you). I know I write this sentence quite often, but… What can I do if I “meet” so many great items?
