### Souldrainer: Heaven's gate

#### 23/11/11 || Lord K Philipson

Marcus Edvardsson is a cool fucken bloke. He was the first guy to ever mix anything by Torture Division (the first demo, obviously). Considering the incredibly shitty sounding files he got from us it’s a miracle he could make it sound as good as it actually does. Thank you. Besides that he plays (bass) in Sweden’s most underrated and talented death metal band, Aeon (as does Souldrainer’s drummer), and he prolly’s got his fingers dirty in other musical constellations as well, but I don’t care to look it up. Anything else? Yeah, he runs a studio or two, of course, so this album is naturally recorded and mixed by him. And he’s got shit long hair too. And a… I think it’s a beard. And he definitely fucks more chicks than you becoz of it. And then… And then… And then…

Yeah.

In Souldrainer he seems to be the main man though considering most music is written by him. And while he’s playing bass in Aeon, guitars is his forte here. And vocals. And programming. And keyboards (with some help from remix wizard and Aeon colleague/superstar/nice-guy/ex-Souldrainer member Daniel Dlimi). As you can see, the ties to Aeon are that of ‘Deliverance’ magnitude, if you get my point.

And that’s where the similarities end.

Souldrainer plays some melodic borderline death metal that’s got more to do with Hypocrisy (just listen to opener “The quest”, or any other song for that matter, and tell me that couldn’t be a Hypo-piece, fucko) than Aeon, so now you know what to expect. The production is good, the performances are flawless and Souldrainer pulls it off well as expected. I can’t say I am floored by the actual tunes, though. Today’s standards when it comes to performance and production are high, and to be able to stand out you need the actual killer material to prevent being lumped together with all the other millions of “good” bands. Souldrainer don’t stand out, but they very much hold penises high.

The Hypocrisy inspiration/worship is a bit too much for me though. There’s even some alien-looking muthafuckers on the cover as well as a tune named “Alien terror”. And we all know Tägtgrens obsession with aliens, so you do the math.

Despite all this nonsense about Aeon and Hypocrisy – Souldrainer’s doing nothing wrong at all. I knew they wouldn’t.

- Information
- Released: 2011
- Label: ViciSolum Productions
- Website: www.souldrainer.com
- Band
- Marcus Edvardsson: vocals, guitars
- Jocke Wassberg: bass
- Arttu Malkki: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. The Quest
- 02. Fed By Fire
- 03. Low
- 04. Alien Terror
- 05. Hung On The Wall
- 06. The God Delusion
- 07. Gate Guard
- 08. The Legacy
- 09. Remember Me
- 10. Dying For Your Sick Belief
- 11. Goodbye Farewell
- 12. Heaven’s Gate
- 13. A track by something called El Parador where Marcus is doing the vocals