Friday 14 August - Starts 17:30

Pokolgep (Headliner)
Törr (Co Headliner)
RAM
Andras
Excruciate
Tormented
Altum Atramentum

Saturday 15 August - Starts 15:30

Death SS (Headliner)
KAT (Co Headliner)
Purgatory
Interment
Istapp
Tribulation
Minotaur
Morbid Insulter
Turbocharged

Funebrarum are first on this split. They are from the US but happen to be largely influenced by the old Swedish/Finnish scene. Underground fiends will be aware of their strong debut, Beneath the Columns of Abandoned Gods. The thick, dark and suffocating blanket covering the music on that one seems to be hurled aside here. Still there is no huge relief for the listener, as even without it the music, you will realise, is far from charming (mind you, for death metal music of this form and spirit, that can only mean a good thing). Raw, serrated and grotesque, the music marches out of your speakers with its blood-stained metal armour clanking, like corpses of an ancient legendary army brought back to life with the purpose of cleansing the scene and reminding the transgressors of its once glorious and respectful past, now either forgotten or heartlessly rehashed just for the sake of it. With an overpowering atmosphere, Funebrarum lead the procession with "Kingdom of Suffering Souls". The song's opening tunes are reminiscent of the putrefying ones of Carnage, after which the song builds up momentum and lashes out convulsively like a newly trapped enormous monster. Gradually, following much lurching, it settles down to play huge Finnish hooks and sublime melodies, bringing to mind Abhorrence (Fin), early Amorphis, Demigod, Funebre, to name a few. If the beginning of "Caught in the Vortex" sounds uncannily familiar and makes the hair stand on end, do not get afraid, for it is only a cover of the mighty Abhorrence. The next one "Into the Grave" is a cover as well, of Grave. These are indeed good picks and well played too, but they are after all cover songs and one would rather hear original Funebrarum compositions, which is why I have been reluctant to give them a higher rating. The remaining song on this split is "Grave Reaper" and as you would expect, it has a strong old school aura, is superbly paced, with faster and heavier, even rumbling parts being alternated with typical (beautiful) Finnish melodies and hooks.

Contrary to what the uninitiated might think, Funebrarum have not recently jumped onto the old school bandwagon and have been doing this right since their inception while adding some of their own qualities to it. They exude the same old spirit and don't merely recreate it. And while their side of the split is fabulous to listen to, the fact is it has only a couple of new Funebrarum songs. But even that is enough to whet the appetite of the real death meal fans and make them wait in eager, almost uncontrollable anticipation of their second full length album that will be released in early 2009.

When a wash of buzzing static knocks you over, you may hold Interment responsible for that. Don't get this band confused with the old one from Finland; Interment are Swedish and unlike the other band on this split, sound Swedish too. With a raw old school vibe, the music bears the unmistakable energetic and aggressive approach of early Dismember with traces of other Swedeath bands such as the vicious and thrashy Merciless and the ferocious early material of Vermin. If you manage to get past the massive almost numbing wall-of-sound created by the guitars, you will hear that the band is very agile and does quite a bit too. Tirelessly it moves about at great speed, tossing off classic hefty Swedish riffs and sometimes lighting scorching leads with an intensity not everyone can handle, while also effecting some good tempo changes. In the final song, an instrumental, the music does slow down and allows the leads to drift through the settling chaos. If their music didn't make the Dismember influences obvious enough, the vocalist's ripping voice and anguish-fuelled forceful delivery too happen to sound quite similar to Matti Karki's; okay fine, a cross between him (mostly him) and Johan Liiva's vocals on early Arch Enemy albums. Production is apt for this kind of music - harsh enough to enable it to do some tangible Swedish-style ass-shredding with ease.

Interment's music is very pleasurable and fans of thrashy Swedish death metal like Dismember are bound to like it. If you ask me though, they seem to owe too much to Dismember, and with that band still being active and dishing out potent albums, Interment's music is probably not going to be sorely missed unless they take extra measures to step out from under their shadow and do something different.

Overall then, if you are a pure death metal fan the music on this split will sound great to your ears. To some that is what matters and despite the discerning critic in me, I agree with that notion. So yes, this is highly recommended.

" I have no idea how I stumbled upon this release, but I'm so glad I did. This split was my first contact with both of these bands, both who play very talented old-school death metal, yet they both play it in a different way. Funebrarum's style is a slower, doomier (is that even a word?) New Jersey version of regular old-school death metal with Swedish riffing, but then they can ramp it up slightly and bring a new meaning to the word  "heavy" all together, while Interment's sound is flat out Swedish death metal with no strings attached, so we know exactly what to expect there. God damn do I love Sweden.

It was a great idea to start this split off with Funebrarum's side because of their slower sound and it is heavy as hell. The guitar riffs will cause earthquakes, the guttural growls will make Priests run for the hills, and the drums will make churches burn to the ground. As I mentioned, this is a really slow version of death metal, very similar to that of Grave, which is interesting since they covered  "Into The Grave" and did it very well, as well as covering "Caught In A Vortex" by Abhorrence which really seems to show off their style quite well. However, it wasn't the cover songs that grabbed my attention about Funebrarum, it was their original compositions "Kingdom Of Suffering Souls" and "Grave Reaper". There's a lot of things in these songs that threw me for a loop and made my neck and spine separate from one another. As I said, it was VERY smart to put Funebrarum's portion in the front lines of battle, because it builds you up for Interment's half.

Now for Interment's portion of "Conjuration Of The Sepulchral". Interment broke up a long time ago after forming in '88, but for some reason they reformed and this is their first release back, but they sure as hell don't sound rusty at all. If anything, it sounds like they've been playing these songs for years. Each one is incredibly catchy with groovy riffs prodding your ears with very stylish drumming to match, and we even have three Centinex members gracing us with their presence, so that automatically tells me that they've been around the death metal scene for quite a while. All of Interment's songs on this split are originals, which really put a plus in my book. As I mentioned before, this band is all about the Swedish death metal and nothing else. They play very well and the songs that really grabbed me by the balls were "Infernal Damnation", "Black Hollow Black", and "Outro: The Soul Collector", a nice little instrumental before the split ends.

I think this splits intent was to try and bring some of the 'darkest" death metal up from the underground, and while I feel I've heard darker bands, this split did a very good job. Both Funebrarum and Interment in my book are stellar bands, and because of this I had bought Funebrarums 2002 full-length "Beneath The Columns Of Abandoned Gods", and I suggest you all do the same along with buying this wonderful split CD and look out for any other releases from Interment as well."

Written by MrVJ on September 17th, 2007