Old school death metal. Everyone raves on and on about it. The old gods -- Morbid Angel, Obituary, Dismember, Suffocation, and sundry -- are still worshipped, and rightfully so. Bloodbath, a Swedish semi-supergroup, was seemingly created to inject old school death metal into the modern death-lite that infests our ears like so many mites.

 

But Bloodbath seems to have taken on a life of its own. I look on the group now as a serious foray into death metal. It represents a bridge between old school and the modern day offerings. Say what you will, but Bloodbath is where Mikael Akerfeldt always should've been. On The Fathomless Mastery, his vocals are truly outstanding. He's kept far away from anything resembling songwriting, so quite naturally, there's no Opethish clean parts. No, this is balls-to-the-walls brutal f'ing death metal.