Old school Death Metal has taken a beating in the recent years due to the emergence of melodic death metal and the more aggressive brutal Death Metal style of music. And it has become even more difficult to find a decent fresh old school Death Metal band. MORBUS CHRON provides you just that. Incorporating minute elements of progressive music, the album stays totally old school and raw. Born in Stockholm, Sweden in 2007,these boys had lots of local heroes to look up to who already had made it big. Not for nothing was the term "Swedish Death Metal Scene" was born in the 90's.

The album has lots of melodies created with lots of unorthodox acoustic guitar parts and the slow drums behind nicely complementing them which makes the music grow a lot beyond being just a metal album. It creates a dark haunting sound, music best enjoyed in a dark forest and what with the lyrics speaking about gore, zombies and the bloodshed, the album clocks a little less than 53 minutes. But the beauty here is this slow music is given a different dimension by the dirty guttural vocals of Robert Andersson which remind you of Jeff Walker of CARCASS and other vocalists from AUTOPSY, OBITUARY and likewise and add to that the axe work of both Edvin Aftonfalk and Robert Andersson have enough catchy riffs and strumming to keep you hooked to the album. The bass can only be heard during the heavy parts and you will not be disappointed with its end result. Both the axe men occasionally bring in doom influenced atmospheric guitar work too. The drums follow the guitars and for the most part of the album are slow, but heavy in doses.

With each song, the music flows like a free drinking water down a stream. It also has an apolocolyptic feel to it and with the above mentioned lyrical content, it just sounds too good at times. I have to mention something very interesting I found while listening to this album. The atmospheric ending of the song "Aurora In The Offing" is continued with the opening of the next song "It Stretches In The Hollow". So if your player plays every track by its track number in the order, there's a good chance you wouldn't even recognize that the song has changed!! Many songs like "Berceuse", "Solace", "Terminus" do not have any vocals allowing the other instruments to fully express themselves.

This album crosses multiple genres of old school Death Metal, Death Doom, Atmospheric Doom, Stoner Metal, though it always stays true to its raw old school Death Metal style and fans of all the above mentioned genres should be able to embrace this album without any second thoughts. The album cover art clearly illustrates the filthy doomy psychedelic effects the album brings out in its entirety.

And as you would expect with such a raw sounding music, the production is kept old school and is sure to please the connoisseurs. The only problem I have with this album are the progressive parts, especially with acoustic parts, though not everything is bad, in the album's entirety, they dilute the raw dark old school feel of the album a bit. This album is a lot more than just "Old wine in a new bottle". I must confess that this is a new band for me and I find that they have already released a demo, an album and 2 EPs to their name and with this album they are sure to break some new grounds. And it remains to be seen if they can grow and rise above their bigger and more famous local heroes.