### My Own Grave: Unleash

#### 05/04/11 || Habakuk

What a shame it is to be a second tier death metal band. You can do everything right with your music, yet still people would still rather buy their tenth Morbid Angel album – not that there’s anything wrong with that – instead of giving your stuff a shot. The same applies to GD reviewers and our written output. Or why else hasn’t “Unleash” been reviewed for our site yet? After all, My Own Grave have their forums hosted here. Well, there are still some Slayer / Maiden albums uncovered, so we have to devote our time accordingly. Not taking into account the amount of label-sent shit flowing through the gates every week, but that’s another story.

What matters is that I’m putting an end to this miserable state of our site now. Or rather, I did three to four weeks ago, since this will have been stuck in the review queue for a while. But who am I to tell you about time travel anyway, Professor.

Let’s talk business: “Unleash” put My Own Grave on the death metal map in 2006, and since then they more or less occupy Australia’s spot there. Somewhere down under, actually pretty damn cool, but rarely in anyone’s center of attention. My Own Grave’s music has no didgeridoos, though. It has no frills either. Instead, crunchy Swedish guitars lay down strings of meaty riffs over a relatively high speed drumming base, and a dude yell his lungs out alternating between an At the Gates-y high-pitched scream and grunted classic death metal vocals. The production is above decent, though possibly lacking a bit of punch, which is probably okay with a steadily forward-pushing album like this.

“So, what’s so special?”, you will ask, and rightfully so – because nothing is special, but everything is damn good. Among all the bands that try to put yet another sub- into the genre pool, My Own Grave stand out as a pillar of Keeping It Simple on which nothing but “Death Matel waz hear” is inscribed. Not that their music is especially dumbed down, but the straightforward approach doesn’t sound like rocket science either. We get little proto-melodies, energetic riffing, fast drumming, and that’s it. Sounds easier than it is, I guess. The key to My Own Grave is not what they do, but that they do it right. This is the kind of efficient Swedeath the world needs instead of the n’th Gothenburg band or p’th washed up “old school” imitator. And by now it’s clear they didn’t stop where they started out with this.

- Information
- Released: 2006
- Label: Karmageddon Media
- Website: www.myowngrave.com
- Band
- Mikael Aronsson: vocals
- Stefan Kihlgren: guitars
- Anders Härén: guitars
- Max Bergman: bass
- John Henriksson: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. Unleash
- 02. From the ashes
- 03. Into pieces
- 04. Spread the plague
- 05. Where carnage reigns
- 06. Backdraft (Where carnage reigns)
- 07. Sheltered by inferno
- 08. Soulstorm
- 09. Heathen divinity
- 10. The beyond
- 11. Theme for the dead
- 12. Strangled by life