Unleashed: Across the Open Sea (1993)

As much as I love Swedish death metal, there are very few bands whose entire discography I have explored.  I am not talking about the Gothenburg melodeath scene, but the Stockholm scene.  I love Entombed for instance, but have only heard four or five albums.  I love Dismember probably more than any other group from the scene, but there are three or four albums I have not checked out.  Amon Amarth is really the only exception, though I have yet to hear their newest album. 

That brings me to Unleashed, a group whose recent output I am quite familiar with, but whose early work I am just now exploring.  Last year, I picked up their sophomore release Shadows in the Deep.  Just recently, I picked up this one, their third album.  I still have a long ways to go to look into their other material.

Unleashed is a straightforward Swedish death metal band who sang about vikings before it was cool to sing about vikings.  Yes, they pre-date Amon Amarth yet never seemed to receive the same level of attention.  Perhaps that is because their music is not as accessible.  They are generally much heavier than their countrymen without the same melodic sensibilities. 

I was a little taken aback when I heard this album for the first time.  The riffs are much more simplistic than the band has used in other albums.  In addition the sound is stripped-down with no frills, very few solos and almost never any instruments outside the typical guitar/bass/drums.  The vocals are delivered in a typical dry-throated snarl.  The songs are mid- to faster-paced and driven by the riffs.  They are generally fairly catchy.

The only real down note on this album is the ill-conceived "Breaking the Law" cover.  Judas Priest is an incredibly dynamic band while Unleashed really only knows one speed.  And so for a band to take a classic like "Breaking the Law", they really need to do something impressive with it.  Unleashed vocalist Johnny Hedlund does not have the pipes to sing Halford's part and does not even try.  The intensity level of the song also seems muted somehow, which is odd coming from this band.  And so the cover simply does not work.  Everything else is terrific though.

I do not know yet where this album stands in my ranking of the Unleashed albums I have heard.  I will have to go back and listen to everything to get that figured out.  I like it quite a bit despite the much more basic sound.