Eighteen years ago it was considered cool as a man, to sport a scarf on a midsummer afternoon, and wear pink half buttoned shirts, but apparently the people of what is since then Grave weren’t especially concerned with these shameful fashion dreads, because they started a death metal band. A Swedish death metal band, because well, they are Swedish and they make Swedish style death metal. Now, ages away from the 80’s, ‘As Rapture Comes’ is their seventh album. And well, it’s Swedish death metal, and so it sounds. It’s decent. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it lacks originality, and in one instance they commit near album suicide.

The album begins with a forgettable intro, probably put on here to set the tone for the album or something. It sounds like there’s bad weather abound, dreariness and what have you, and futuristic aliens with handcuffs on. I don’t know what the hell we’re supposed to do with this intro other than press skip.
Second song ‘Burn’ is straight away familiar Swedish style death. Thing that stands out is that most parts don’t really stick together or hit any peak until they merge back into the main part with the so many times repeated riff. The grunted “As I watch them die!”, is nice towards the end, though and picks the song up to a 7 out of 10.
The next song, called ‘Through Eternity’ is pretty forgettable, as it offers nothing you haven’t heard before, but then perhaps played with better riffs. ‘By Demons Bred’ closes out the first third of the album (I didn’t count the intro as a song, so we have nine). Similar to song three, this one is also high paced with too much of mister Lindgren’s ever the same grunting and no room for ingenuity. Or an outstanding riff… Really, this stuff is mediocre at best in songs three and four, twice a 4.5/10.

We begin our journey into the second 33 percent of this record with ‘Living The Dead Behind’. I know, they could’ve also called it ‘Geschwitsch And Chatter Of Boxes In Rain’, because that makes an equal amount of sense. This song is better than the previous couple, but again, I have to say, it is nothing special. The riffs and drums just aren’t inventive enough and focus too much on repetition: 6/10. Also, I guess the production could be a bit thicker; now it sounds as though constantly gusty wind blew during the recording process.
We embark upon song six, in which we hear some nice slow parts, with a good guitar solo that follows suit and now a more scrambled kind of vocal sound from Lindgren, which keeps things interesting, until they lose themselves in aimless, inspiration-free mayhem again.

Food for the most omnivore of death metalheads only: 5.5/10.
We find ourselves at song seven, ‘Battle Of Eden’. Finally we hear an awesome riff: the main one. It is mid-tempo nudging towards fast, rolling, low, with double kicked drums to back it up: really good. You wish they had more of these. Also, the song fits together much better than any of the previous six do. Aside from the brilliant structure-riff that works so well in combination with the drums and vocals, the other parts in this song are quite good too: 8.5/10.

The last third is up. ‘Epic Obliteration’ the title, so you know what to expect: carnage. I’ll be brief: they serve it. There are some slower moments on the song, where there is some rather smart, ingenious drum fills to be heard, but that’s about it: 6.0 out of 10.
Number nine is the near album suicide. I’ll review this in the next paragraph, because it needs extra attention.
First now then, the last: the title track, ‘As Rapture Comes’ (obviously). This track is less epic as you may expect, given the fact that it is the album closer. It stays in mid-tempo, has familiar guitarwork, double kicked drums again and towards the end, a silly hacked part: 7 out of 10.
Could it be album suicide? I am speaking of course of the record’s number 9: ‘Them Bones’. Indeed, a cover of Alice In Chains’ great song. No one should do this. What is especially bad is that of course the band is keen on it being a death metal cover of the song, which cannot be done without mindless sped up parts with shitty ass hacked drums. In fact, the only two parts that kind of work, are the parts that are just about the same as on the original, but just heavier. Bottom line: please don’t do this again. Album suicide? No, but just barely not.

The conclusion to all this must be that ‘As Rapture Comes’ is an album you’ve heard before and better. The riffs are generally unimpressive, parts don’t often fit together that well and there isn’t enough variation too keep the music interesting for longer than about two and a half songs. Not to be all negative, but maybe the band just used up all their inspiration in the past eighteen years. There’s lots of better death metal albums out there, same goes for the specific Swedish death metal. I will end the review with a line I used before: for the most omnivore of (death) metalheads only.