Comecon: Converging Conspiracies (1993)

Comecon was a Swedish death metal band.  Well, sort of.  It was more of a project than a band.  There were only two full-time members, Rasmus Ekman and Pelle Ström, each of whom performed bass, guitars and keyboards.  There was never a human drummer, leaving that task to a drum machine.  And there was never a full-time vocalist.  Instead the band had essentially a guest singer on each release.  They used L-G Petrov (Entombed) most often, and Marc Grewe (Morgoth) appeared on the band's final album.  There is a reason that this is the first album I have checked out by Comecon.  It features Martin Van Drunen (Asphyx, Hail of Bullets, Pestilence, etc.), one of my favorite death metal vocalists.

This is a brutally savage release with biting riffs, aggressive vocals and a whole lot of speed.  Van Drunen delivers his typical rabid bark and sounds as good as anything else he has ever done.  The band obviously takes a lot of influence from other Swedish death metal bands of their time.  The typical buzzsaw guitar tone is present in spades, drawing comparisons to Entombed, Dismember and Grave, and there is plenty of groove to the riffing style.  So, in a lot of ways, this is a typical Swedish death metal band.

Comecon though, stands out a little bit from their Swedeath brethren.  There is the obvious lineup issues detailed in the opening paragraph.  But the band also tends to use some off-kilter riffing and bizarre moments.  For instance, in second track "The Ethno-Surge", there is heavy usage of a juice harp, which is just plain odd.  Then there are some strange breakdown sections that feature call and response between acoustic and electric guitar in "Community" that finds some way to sound perfectly natural next to the more standard riffing.

This is something of an underrated album in the powerful Swedish death metal scene.  I had seen the album cover a number of times, but had not really heard the band before picking this one up.  I came for Martin Van Drunen, I stayed for the terrific take on Swedish death metal.