### Desultory: Counting our scars

#### 27/01/11 || Love Lagerkvist

I’m pretty confident that everyone who has ever walked ze lands ov Globalius Dominitia have read ze unholy scrolls ov Swedeath’s golden era. But for every grand stallion of the scene, there was a horde of foals trying to get a piece of the salt stone. But while some simply tried to walk in their peers footsteps, others at least used a different pair of boots. One of these followers went by the name of Desultory – a band that spent 6 years of making a more melodic type of Swedeath before they did a “Cold Lake” in ’96 with “Swallow the Snake”. Fast forward fourteen years and one reunion later, the same dudes are back with revenge – and hopefully a better album.

Don’t expect this to be a total blast from the past like Entrails’ latest, the majority (if not all) of these tracks are written in a post-“Slaughter of the soul”, a fact that manifests itself in a number of different ways: Klas Morberg’s vocals are clearly influenced by Lindberg’s iconic shouts, a lot of the riffage clearly have “that” oh-so recognizable sound to them and heck, even the guitarists are fucken brothers. Coincidence? Probably, but let’s just pretend the opposite to make things a bit more exiting.

Despite all these similarities, Desultory still manages to cook up a relatively unique thanks to it’s prominent roots in the old-school Stockholm sound. A great example of this is album highlight and opener “In a cage”, which with its clearly “Left hand path” inspired structure manges to slay so much that the urge to base the entire review on it alone nearly gets to strong. Lucky for you, I’ve actually got some kind of journalistic standards. So after several listens to the whole think, I’ve concluded the following:

Or for the two of you reading this review off the incredibly excursive braille version of GD: My paint skills are godlike. Oh, and the album goes downhill after track 3.

- Information
- Released: 2010
- Label: Pulverised Records
- Website: Desultory MySpace
- Band
- Klas Morberg: vocals, guitar
- Håkan Morberg: guitars
- Johan Bohlin: bass
- Thomas Johnson: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. In a cage
- 02. Counting our scars
- 03. Ready to bleed
- 04. This broken halo
- 05. The moment is gone
- 06. Uneven numbers
- 07. Dead ends
- 08. Leeching life
- 09. A crippling heritage