Grave

It's been six years since Sweden's Grave recorded an album, but Back From the Grave finds them in fine form. Unfortunately it's a form we've all heard before. One of the founders of the crunchy Swedish death metal sound, and a band that usually has excellent album titles, Grave shows the young pups how it should be done here. For starters, the band utilise a heavy production that doesn't get mired down in trigger-happy drum sounds or bass-drenched monotony. Instead, the instruments breathe, big and booming, heavy as can be. They also have to their advantage a nice ability to keep things at a mid-pace mosh, crafting cleverly heavy death metal tunes that just may end up stuck in your head when all is said and done. It's pretty much exactly what you would expect from a Grave album, so it falls into the realm of heard it before. Still, this is classy stuff, worthy of any death metal collection, albeit only worthy of your hard-earned money if you're a big Grave-head or a raving death metal completist.