Vomitory qualify themselves as beer metal, judging the wallpapers that came included with this promo. I would say they sound far too serious to be labelled as such. Tankard is beer metal, Zimmer’s Hole is beer metal but Vomitory, in my opinion, is just fast old school death metal. So, there you have it: Another band pigeonholed.

To label the band as merely another old school death metal band is not entirely honest, since they have been around since 1991. This means they experienced firsthand the uprising of Swedish death metal with bands like Grave, Unleashed and Dismember gaining considerable success. When most bands fell apart or changed their musical direction, Vomitory continued to struggle and to prove that this wasn’t in vain they secured a deal with the mighty Metal Blade Records in the year 2000.

I don’t know any of their previous albums but this one, Primal Massacre is surely interesting enough to begin a search for their back catalogue because it’s one fine piece of death metal.

The tracks range from mid tempo to fast and the riffs are just amazing. Most important: All tracks have that typical Swedish ‘vibe’ that makes this music so addictive. Just listen to “Retaliation”, a blueprint of a good death metal song.

Fortunately production is really good with the right sound for this genre, the guitars sound filthy, the drums deafening and the grunts are just about loud enough not to get in the way of the great riffs. And riffs are what this music is all about.

If someone thinks this is original, trendy music he’s dead wrong and should stay far away from it. But, if you like aforementioned bands and you are a lover of quality death metal this is a mandatory purchase.