The 21st Best Album of the 00s: Bloodbath - "Nightmares Made Flesh" (2004)

I don't know why I get a kick out of death metal supergroups. I've tried to analyze it and came up with nothing. Perhaps it's the simple fact that death metal is awesome and having awesome musicians from several different awesome death metal bands get together and do something awesome is awesome.

Sweden has a fair share of these, such as Murder Squad, Death Breath, God Among Insects, and Torture Division, to name a few of my favorites. And of course there's Bloodbath.

Formed in 1998 by dudes from Opeth, Katatonia and Edge Of Sanity. By the time this second album came out though the Opeth dude had left and been replaced by a Hypocrisy dude and a Witchery dude had joined on drums after the Edge Of Sanity dude decided he'd rather play guitar.

As a fan of Opeth in general and Mikael Åkerfeldt in particular, I was quite surprised when I was putting this list together and I realised I actually prefer this one, the only one with Peter Tägtgren on vocals, over the Åkerfeldt ones.

While the 2002 debut Resurrection Through Carnage has some of the band's all time best songs (So You Die, Bathe In Blood, Ways To The Grave) this album is more even in terms of quality. To make sure I really like this album better I even gave each individual song a rating from 1 to 5 to get an average score.

Resurrection Through Carnage got 4.1, Nightmares Made Flesh got 4.3. The truth is in the math.

And although I'm all for the retro Stockholm death metal sound of circa 1990, I'm glad they stepped away from the vintage feel of the first album and moved forward with a more updated and powerful production for this one.

And Peter Tägtgren fucking slays on the mic. I almost forgive for all the crap Pain records he's wasted his time on over the years.







Buy Nightmares Made Flesh @ Amazon.com.