Vanhelgd - Church of Death

Vanhelgd
Church of Death
2011 Nuclear War Now!
Vanhelgd's debut, "Cult of Lazarus" completely blew me away on its release, and I've been waiting for the follow up with great anticipation ever since. Things are a little different this time around though. "Church of Death" has a much thinner production, but that's really the only negative point. They're still old school Swedish as fuck. The band lineup is still intact, with both Jimmy Johansson and Mattias Frisk handling guitars and vocals. Never been much of a fan of the "tradeoff" style, but it does seem to work here. One of those two guys also does his best to sound like Martin van Drunen. To his credit, he comes somewhat close. As far as the songs go, Vanhelgd do move away from the typical Entombed/Dismember sound here, and even add in some keyboards to give a few songs that extra "creepy factor." But we're not talking about Nocturnus here, so they're used very sparingly. I wouldn't say that they surpassed the debut, but I wouldn't say that they didn't surpass it either. No sophomore slump here. Vanhelgd also maintain a bit more of a "classy" sound than some of their contemporaries. "Church of Death" is nowhere near as filthy sounding as the recent released by Intestinal or Repuked. That's ok with me. I like all of those bands, but sometimes it's better to play ugly and not dirty, as is the case here. Big thumbs up from me to the Vanhelgd guys. Keep it up!