Sweden – Page 2 – Metal Eclipse Reviews

Unleashed – Fire Upon Your Lands

Metalcatto

Unleashed is an institution in Swedish Death Metal. The band was there at the dawn of time, back when everyone played with the same rancid distortion pedal and accidentally created a music subgenre. Fire Upon Your Lands is supposed to be a health check for a band that still feels fresh despite its years. I know — a Swedish band singing about Viking stuff already feels like raining over the ocean, but when you have such a classic act, things can go either really well or make you regret being a Metalhead. Let’s see which one we end up with here, ok? Wish me luck.

An Abstract Illusion – The Sleeping City

Metalcatto

I was there when An Abstract Illusion released Illuminate the Path and blew me away. Little did I know the band could reach even greater heights with Woe. Ever since Opeth traded Progressive Death Metal for Dadcore, Sweden hasn’t had a band to carry that torch. Meanwhile, scenes in Australia, Norway, and Germany have been thriving, building names of their own. But it was about time someone from the land of meatballs and cinnamon buns responded with authority. The Sleeping City could be that answer. The catch? The band is stepping into an almost impossible challenge. I mean, Woe was the Prog album of 2022, right? Let’s go.

LOMMI- 667788

Metalcatto

There’s something you need to know about me as a proud Stockholmer: I can’t miss a chance to make fun of Gothenburg. So you can imagine my disappointment when I got LOMMI‘s 667788 (or as I like to call it, grandpa’s password) and not a single member was named Glenn or Jimmy. You’d have to be deep in the culture to get that joke. Still, I promised myself I’d put my prejudice aside and give this Heavy/Groove Metal outfit a fair shot. Will I be biased because of city rivalries? Absolutely. But I’ll try to behave.

Shadows – Miseria

Metalcatto

I might’ve said it before, but this year seems to be a big one for Blackened Death Metal, and Shadows wants in on the trend with Miseria. At first glance, the album gives the impression that it’s more than ready to do the job—punching a hole through your emotions and unleashing the evil beast that lurks inside your heart. Does that make any sense? No clue. But what I do know is what this album offers, and I’m about to tell you.

Floating – Hesitating Lights

Metalcatto

Let me say something straight: I meant to review this way earlier, but life (and summer holidays) got in the way. Even after the delay, I couldn’t bring myself to ignore Floating. A band claiming to mix Death Metal with Post-Punk? That doesn’t happen every day. I needed to hear it to believe it! Hesitating Lights might just be that weird record that ends up on the “best genre fusion” list by the end of the year. Or am I being overly optimistic? Is it too soon? I don’t know—but let’s get to work, ok?

Eternal Darkness – Eternal Darkness

Metalcatto

I usually don’t give much context about the bands we review at MER, but this time is different—and not just because it’s a Swedish band again. Eternal Darkness – Eternal Darkness is a debut that took 35 years to get done. I wasn’t even born when the first idea for it started emerging! And yet, I find out the band has already split. Dead before being properly born—well, it can’t get more Death Metal than that. Let’s get to it!

Growls & Grammar: Ixone analyses Naglfar – Harvest

Ixone

Very few albums have impacted me as deeply as Naglfar’s Harvest, and a huge part of that is, of course, its lyrical content. Why is that? To start, it’s fitting to address the fact that, generally, in Black Metal, when someone wants to explore dark states of being, the result often ends up being an absolute trauma dump of a DSBM record. Yeah… there are better ways to do it. Luckily, Naglfar found a solution to that problem on this album. But how did they manage that? By doing quite literally what symbolist poets were doing in the late 19th century: assigning external elements to inner states. However, in Harvest, this is done with far less subtlety and far more visceral intensity—which, being Black Metal, is exactly what one might expect.

Lepra – Mortuus Morgana

Metalcatto

I was supposed to take it easy on local bands, but what can I do if they keep sending me stuff? Lepra, as the name implies, takes itself seriously. These guys clearly loved Kingdom of Heaven (yours truly has more mixed feelings about it), but considering where they come from, Mortuus Morgana should be one of those quiet, under-the-radar releases that doesn’t impress many, right? Well, to be fair, that was just me being condescending. Just because an album shows up without noise or drama doesn’t mean it can’t hit hard.

Katatonia – Nightmares as Extensions of the Waking State

Stargazer Scholar

In 1741, J.S. Bach published a set of compositions that later became known as the Goldberg Variations, all the thirty pieces whereof explored the bass line and the chord progression of a single aria. In 1934, Sergey Rachmaninoff wrote his Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini, which reproduced, inverted, and otherwise transfigured the great Italian’s 24th Caprice. In 2025, Katatonia’s new album, Nightmares as Extensions of the Waking State, comes out… And I reckon you can see what I’m driving at.

Vildhjarta – + där skogen sjunger under evighetens granar +

Metalcatto

It’d be a total understatement to say that Vildhjarta is a strange band. How can I explain it? You know how Meshuggah plays convoluted rhythms, but somehow there’s always a 4×4 groove going on in the drums? Well, forget about that here and get ready to embrace absolute rhythmic chaos — + där skogen sjunger under evighetens granar + is. I know, that name looks like main effects in a linear model (this is my nerdiest joke to date, I’m so proud!), but that only makes me more excited. We’re here to be surprised, right?