Sweden’s Sarcasm has been knocking about since 1992, starting out as a death metal band, but as they progressed, they changed their sound to a more melodic black metal sound similar to Dissection, Necrophobic, Unanimated, Naglfar, etc.
Their last album, Mourninghoul, was back in 2024, which I never got around to hearing despite being familiar with and owning most of the band’s 5 efforts.
So here we are with album number 6, with the lineup largely intact except for the addition of Phillip Borg replacing Jonas Soder, but the result is the same- damn top-notch 90s era Swedish melodic black/death metal.
The 8-song, 50-minute affair gets right the Fuck to it with opener “Essence of Existence”; no intro, no atmospheric build-up or lead-in, just searing, razor-sharp riffs which deliver black metal frost and death metal fire into one tone, and harsh black metal rasps from OG member Heval Bozarslan.
Second track, “Altering the Perception”, might be even better with a perfect balance of melodic black metal and death metal savagery that recalls Grief of Emerald‘s It All Turns to Ashes, Necrophobic’s Bloodhymns, and Naglfar’s Diabolic, with the sheer blistering but melodic fury contained.
The rest of the 6 tracks follow suit (other than a couple of acoustic parts here and there and the more restrained, keyboard filled track, “A Concept Older Than Time”) with downright scorching effectiveness, whether it’s “Crumbling Mind Edifice”, where about 30 seconds in, it takes skin flesh from bone, “Plunged into a Paradox” with its more menacing lurching last third, or shredding lead filled closer “Empirical Life Metaphysical”. It’s all killer stuff.
As he did on Mourninghoul, Lawrence Mackrory’s (Aeternus, Baest, Darkane, Lik, In Pain, etc) delivers a mix/master that is as sharp as the riffs, making Lifeforce Omnibound another killer addition to the band’s fine catalog.
