The early 90's Swedish Death Metal division, leaving out the Gothenburg melodic Death parties aside, spawned quite a large dosage of bands. Of course that like in any typical spawning, there is never a 100% survival rate of the test of time. WOMBBATH, hailing from Västmanland, once for a short time named SEIZURE, joined their local Death Metal peers and was considered quite a promise, after releasing the decent "Brutal Mights" demo and the better produced EP "Several Shapes", WOMBBATH made it with a debut album flagged as "Internal Caustic Torments", via a small French label named Thrash Records, following the natural order of their local Death Metal perception with an utmost ferocity, keeping their Death Metal sacrilegious and abusing, devastating and uncultivated, however, as pointed out on several other Swedish examples of the day, the band's music captured the ferocious ambiance of early DEATH and the Doom / Death infestation of early MORBID ANGEL. Two decades after the album's original release, and almost twenty years after the band's disbandment, Pulverised Records reissues "Internal Caustic Torments" as a piece of history with the aid of Dan Swano the was took charge of the remastering process.

In general, "Internal Caustic Torments", and I am thinking as if I was a Metalhead back in the band's heyday and after listening to countless of Death Metal albums of the time, isn't that a special musical piece after all. No doubt that the album's sound, without bearing in mind that much for the early demo and EP in stored, also thanks to Swano, is certainly what nowadays' productions misplaced, and left behind, because there is no reverting to that bit of rawness that was simply godlike and immensely addictive. Honestly, there has been a fair share of compositions that were spreading around like the flies since WOMBBATH had much in common to early local Death Metal bands as GOD MACABRE, ENTOMBED, SORCERY, GOREMENT among the many that were once crawling through the scene back then. Every now and then the songs would shift between the traditional patterns of Death Metal into hooks of gloom Doom with a few leakages towards Thrash swarms. Riff wise, for a rhythm guitar fan that admires that past concentration on morbid rotten heaviness, it was quite a treat, though largely WOMBBATH produced riffs and rhythm section renderings that rather repeated themselves. The lead roles were rather common as well, vocals were pretty much expected as a prime aspect of the entire Swedish scene that lurked with guttural spits, and I should not forget to divulge the infrequent lead guitar solo twitches generating a depressed melodic pseudoscience of pure mastery, dashing between old Doom and Death Metal. "Corporal Punishment", "Conceal Interior Torments", "Beyond the Gloomy" and "Prevent Anemia" give away certain feel of numbness, like kicking a dead corpse, but it also unveils WOMBBATH's perspective upon creating energetic grinding Death Metal pomposities attesting rigorousness with slow tempo chug choppers of aching late 80's old school nurtured calamity.

I won't be recommending this reissue to merely Death Metal fans, yet I would urge every Metalhead to bear witness to one of the many bands that loomed the Swedish classic extreme Metal scene. Nowadays Swedish bands, and others in a closer proximity, have been trying to relive the sounds and echoes of the past but without too much accomplishment, better to take a good long peak at old remnants. Be sure to notice the breeding prior to "Internal Caustic Torments" with the demo and EP, nothing fancy but providing a pretty good idea of what came next.