Label: Napalm Records
Date: November 12th, 2021
My very first review for Abaddon was about the last album of a legend, so why shouldn’t it be like that with the second one? Well, there are some differences between these legends, actually. The first one is about the sub-genre of metal they play, the second is about, let’s call it, labels’ politics or to say it more clearly about approach to promotion. Or maybe in the opinion of the Austrian label who released “No sign of Life” Abaddon is too small magazine to care about it?!? Hell knows, but the band deserves at least a review, so I’ll do it now! I can do it thanks to my metal brother from here (I mean Sweden) who borrowed me a CD. I know, it is also possible to find it on some portal with videos, but I’m the old school one and physical copy is something I’ll always appreciate much more than the digital or virtual or what it calls.
The same as in the case of Exodus I deeply doubt I need to present to anyone Unleashed. Everyone knows where the guys are from, what they play, and actually are one of the founders of this way of playing, and so on and so on. That’s why I directly start to write about the music itself “No Sign of Life” is, if I can count (I went to school quite a long time ago, so…) fourteenth studio full-length of Stockholm’s residents. It contains eleven tracks of what all their fans expected, especially that the ensemble was always faithful to Swedish death metal and had never tendencies to experiments. Of course you can find some differences between this album and for example “Victory”, but it just calls the evolution. Anyways, the most important is, what I actually wrote some lines above, that this is evolution and not revolution! So you can find on here everything that you love those, and not only those, Swedish for. And here I could and probably even should write something about riffs, vocals and stuff like that. But why and what to do if you know very well what it means to play death metal in the old Swedish style? You’ll find here everything that music like that should include and you know what I am speaking about, so will don’t mention all these things.
Anyways, there’s also some similarity or better to say something common for “No Sign of Life” and the album I reviewed as a first one in my Abaddon “career”. Probably the most of you are like “what the fuck he’s talking about” at the moment. At least I’d don’t be surprised if it was like that. Well, this common point for both (and not only them, by the way) stuff I’m talking about is the fact that it is impossible for me to make the choice of the best song. Actually I had “a little” problem to tell you which album is the best one. Fortunately, anyone who asks me any of these questions makes me really happy!
Unleashed never created too long tracks (what wouldn’t be a good solution when we’re talking about this kind of music and this way of playing it, by the way), so you can have some kind of disappointment. But how much energy is needed to put a start- or repeat-bottom or click with the help of a mouse on the screen? And exactly how much energy you need to listen to “No Sign…” again and again and again and… So, let’s say it out loud, this isn’t a hard job to do. I’m doing it and tell you the truth: I haven’t had enough of this full-length! But well, finally stop repeating this stuff because there’s so many good new albums, EPs and so on. Besides I need to write more reviews to give you the possibility to hear the word about new music and, at least from time to time, the one about new bands, I mean bands you didn’t even hear about earlier. And since the scene is huge, alive and is improving all the time you can be sure of this second thing I mentioned. And who knows… Maybe even the next one will help you to discover a new band for you? The fact is there’re a lot of great albums of well-known bands to do, but you never know what will be my next step in “the career”.
