LAST LEGION is a militant blackened thrash band from the frozen wastelands of Sweden.  Their pedigree shimmers throughout their debut "Metall, Blod & Aska," a mixture of stripped-down old school, chug-chug metal and '90s era Swedish metal. Olle Olsson growls throughout the album like a higher-pitched ABBATH, and the three-piece drums/bass/guitar attack by Andreas Berglun, Christian Larsson and Tomas Jeppson lay a solid foundation for their angry assault. Like ABBATH or his immortal IMMORTAL, LAST LEGION have managed to mine the tepid depths of the metallic magma for vestiges of growled melodies, something many of their peers miss out on.  While LAST LEGION is definitely about pummeling you over the head and keeping the steel-toed boot to your neck, they also realize that even in the extremest of metal, a hook dripping in the blood and guts of your enemy is still a hook.

Forgoing the temptation to sing in English, the quartet make the wise decision to spit all the lyrics in their native Swedish.  It's a powerful effect, evoking the mythic lore of their Scandanavian ancestors and the sweeping Arctic winds of centuries gone by. Metal is about projecting power and desperation in equal measures: it's the admittance of human fallacy, coupled with an unparalleled taste for violence and death.  "Metall, Blod & Aska" is a soundtrack for war- Russia's unilateral invasion of Ukraine; smoke rising from the ashes of a beleaguered Sudan; the sound of stone from a resistance fighter's sling against the side of an Israeli tank.  Even if you can't understand the lyrics, the language of death at the hands of one who doesn't speak the same language- literally or figuratively- is understood by all.

"Nar Kriget Hammer" starts with the sound of air raid sirens. Unintelligible megaphone announcements and screaming linger muffled over a martial snare.  A clean guitar, coupled with strings, enters signaling a march to the death. A spoken word baritone sounds as if they are the words of the priest reading last rites. The song then explodes into a heavy, mid-tempo old school death groove that marches along for four minutes before exiting to the same martial stomp. The song aptly leads into thrasher "Pansarmarch," which gallops with KREATOR-like riffing, Olle Olsson's pained growls sounding like the turning treads on a mud and blood covered tank. "122" may- or may not be- the soundtrack for the infamous Nazi Germany infantry division that was doomed to failure in the lowest of all human endeavors.  It's a knuckle-dragging, no frills thrash stomp into murder and destruction. "Hat & Automatvapen," loosely translated, has something to do with hatred and automatic weapons.  It's the most chaotic, brutal and noisiest song on the album.  Nestled (if you can use that word) where it is in the album, it comes across as the disc's most introspective song: the line of no turning back has been crossed and we're all doomed to die a violent, purposeless death. Final song "Manskligt Avfall" is the ultimate decree. Human waste, garbage for the human wood-chipper known as war, LAST LEGION acts as a warning for us all, one they know we won't heed. Peace is a child's pipe dream.  War is the terrestrial nightmare that's as human as breathing or fucking.  LAST LEGION is the soundtrack to our militant evolutionary demise.

The power in LAST LEGION's full-length debut lies in its brevity, its allegiance to form and a compositional simplicity that delivers a raw, violent heavy metal punch. It's an impressive contribution to the legion of Swedish metal gods that have delivered the same painful message to listeners across the globe.  A militant commitment to telling the story of war may seem to paint the band into a thematic corner, but with chops like these it won't be hard for LAST LEGION to mine another part of humanity's painful existence.  After all, there's a lot to choose from.