SWEVEN

Slowly, quietly, but surely a guitar plays, over time rising in volume. Other instruments soon join, and when the drums join you know you're soon in for the crunch of metal. But for now they play as before. It takes awhile, but eventually this intro breaks into the expected progressive death metal, and demonic voices rise from the depths to welcome you. Things eventually calm back down, and then return to fury. This continues on to the fifteen minute mark. That would be an apt description of the first three, united tracks of Morbus Chron's second outing, "Berceuse", "Chains", and "Towards a Dark Sky", and also sums up the style of the rest of the record. To my ears this is strictly an improvement over the already excellent style of Edge of Sanity on their seminal "Crimson", likely part of the inspiration for these newly minted Swedes. A top album of 2014 for me, I recommend fans of prog death, especially those who find quiet interludes pleasing, check this wonderful record out.