Artist: Die Hard
Title: Evil Always Return / Emissaries Of The Reaper
Type: Compilation Album
Label: Abyss
Well I’m sure most of you are au-fait with the Austrian Death Machine a musical metal project in praise of the cinematic greats of Arnie. Well it seemed only right that a bunch of mad Swedes got together to redress the balance and give Bruce Willis some love with their band Die Hard. This is perfectly timed for release as well, as anyone who has watched the film knows, Die Hard is the greatest Christmas film ever!
Ok you can relax, I am of course talking complete and utter tosh and this has no truth to it at all but do you know how many album intros I write? Die Hard are from Sweden that much is true and the reason I grabbed this from the six discs kindly sent to us by Abyss recently was as I was intrigued to hear what this band are like, as during the time this compilation was put together they had Hakan Jonsson of Watain on drums (although he has now been replaced by Per Karlsson as he obviously is busy with his other blood soaked group.) The CD is made up of three parts, Evil Always Return (sic) an EP from 2008, their Demo from 2007 and a couple of early rehearsal recordings.
This is black thrash with shredding buzz-saw guitars, rough n’ gruff vocals and chundering bass. There’s a pretty good groove and sense of melody behind it all and a feral, ravenous whiplashing pace which is prone to move toward a slower doom-laden crawl. Some songs are on the disc more than once and in the case of ‘Emissaries Of The Reaper’ no less than three times, so if it doesn’t get you the first time around it will be back to bite quickly enough. There are some nice throat retching screams from vocalist Harry Hasse and plenty of vocals decrying the might of the dark lord. Mixed with some flailing guitar leads, infectious intensity and morbid melodies this is a great little introduction to the band and very good news for anyone wanting to get hold of their no doubt hard to obtain early demos. Apparently the group released a two track EP in 2011 on Agonia, I will keep my ears peeled for a new album as it will be interesting to see where they have gone from here.
http://www.diehard.se
Pete Woods
MTUK HOME
