Atmospheric furious Swedish Blackened Death Metal with deep roots in the 90’s!

 

Sarcasm rank among those Swedish Death Metal units that’s tricky to label. Tags such as “Swedeath” and “Melodic Death Metal” are far from the complete truth. The band has deliberately avoided those safe realms. There is so much to show and tell so they chose to embrace the much of the metal spectrum while remaining the outmost extreme. However, the current quartet who have recorded “Lifeforce Unbound” bear little resemblance to the early ‘90s when the band put out several demos up to 1994, recorded their debut full-length, and then broke up until 2015 when that first album saw the light of day.

 

The band has now reached their sixth album. This time they pushed the limits once more, the intense energy and speed combined with complex riffing and catchiness few bands can pull off has made Sarcasm truly top of the league. These 8 songs presented on their new album “Lifeforce Omnibound” show the band at their highest quality, musically and production-wise. Despite the presence of the effectively straightforward 4 minute opener “Essence of Existence, much of the material seeks a share of complexity. With an average over 5 minutes per song, a fair amount of structural fiddling takes place, as well as numerous touches that promote interest over lengthy periods of listening. Mixed and mastered once again by the sound wizard Lawrence Mackrory. Sarcasm is a 4-piece band these days, due to time constraints Anders no longer will be a recording member but still be with the band as a live member from now on. Since the resurrection, only one of the former members has remained in the line-up, being vocalist Heval Bozarslan.

 

Heval, who once again exploring other-worldly topics, actually doesn’t want credit for the lyrics. According to him, the words instead were channeled to him from a higher force where answers to 8 different topics were given. Ethereal and metaphysical lyrics are not new to this band, but this time they are less metaphorical. And indeed, doorways open during the 40 minutes of the album’s journey, the many levels of atmosphere this band can reach is remarkable.