### Deranged: Plainfield cemetery

#### 06/06/12 || BamaHammer

Deranged is one of those bands I discovered one day while I was really bored and clicking around the Metal Archives looking for the next awesome/hilarious thing to keep my attention for the next nine seconds. I was craving something both new and brutal, so I decided a do a little research into the Swedish side of things (as usual). I saw Deranged had a pretty decent reputation as a middle-tier Swedish death metal band, and possessed a history going back to the early ’90s. From what I read about their releases, people either really liked them or was meh’d to death with them. For some reason, I deemed them worthy of a few spins, and “Plainfield cemetery” was just where I happened to start.

Deranged doesn’t necessarily sound very Swedish at all on this album. The riffs never really ride like they do with Entombed or Unleashed or any other Swedish heavyweight. Instead songs pound and chug along in the vein of brutal American death metal, and for the most part, it’s done very well. In no way are they pushing the death metal envelope or revolutionizing the genre somehow, but Deranged does deliver a very tight, well performed slab of death metal of the utmost level of brutality.

In conjunction with the relentless blasting on the drums, the guitar parts sound much more intricate than they actually are, but in reality, they’re just standard, simplistic detuned death metal riffs done with a tone that is as smooth as broken glass glued to sandpaper, and it works well. Everything is done so fast and at such a ridiculously powerful mix volume, it’s easy to miss what each the instruments are trying to pull off, but that grinding guitar tone atop the deep bass sound make things a little more clear. It’s not the best production in the world for an album like this, but it’s also not the worst.

The vocals, courtesy of Calle Fäldt, bring an almost chanting quality to the growls. There are no long-term screams or constipation relief grunts for any real duration. Everything is short and very succinct, which suits the rhythmic chugs of the music perfectly, and creates the desire to get sucked into general beat of the music if nothing else. Fäldt sounds like he’s growling with a mouth full of flaming shit, so picking out words is a near impossibility, but you can definitely feel the pulse of when he’s growling, and that makes most of these songs fairly catchy. I may not know the words, but I sure as fuck can look and sound like an idiot trying to sing along with random noises, and it’s fun to try. As for the lyrics, they are completely incomprehensible, like I said, but if you’re into gore and over-the-top horror, you’ll get a kick out of reading them anyway. The song titles are pretty fucken fantastic as well (“Deathgasm” anyone?).

Overall, “Plainfield” is an excellent, albeit short (37 minutes), death metal experience from start to finish, and if you dig extremely brutal, blasting death metal that’s utterly relentless, you’d probably like it a lot. This is an album that never lets up for a single moment. Just when you think things couldn’t get any heavier and a break in the action seems due, Deranged continue to pound away with the blastbeats and grind away with the riffing. This isn’t the best death metal album out there, and it’s surely not going to shift any paradigms about the genre, but it’s definitely a fun, catchy, and brutal experience that you shouldn’t miss.

And for the record, “Mutilate and Dump You” is a fucken hit.

- Information
- Released: 2002
- Label: Listenable
- Website: Deranged MySpace
- Band
- Calle Fäldt: vocals, bass
- Johan Axelsson: guitars
- Rikard Wermén: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. Beaten, Raped, Fuckin’ Left to Die
- 02. Stab and Hack
- 03. Mutilate and Dump You
- 04. We Lure and Abduct
- 05. God Is Dead
- 06. Deathgasm
- 07. Imbecile Humans / Drag Her Out to Die
- 08. Suffering, the Sweet Suffering
- 09. Roadside Rendezvous
- 10. The Deviant Dead