Ceremonial Oath - The Book of Truth (1993)

   Ceremonial Oath just didn't fit into the line of old school Swedish death metal bands. Even their demo records as Desecrator had interesting experimenting ambitions, that mixed early Celtic Frost with the that time actual thrash and death metal influences, spiced up with some pretty classic '80s heavy metal themes. Unfortunately that experiment didn't work out well, mainly because of the narrative vocal style that was like oil on fire. However, "The Book of Truth" was something else, a new milestone not only for the band, but also for the genre.

   The album successfully framed together the various influences the band desired to involve, and finally in a unified and well composed form. Because of its complexity and mixed influences "The Book of Truth" became a quite technical album, an unusually technical one for a debut. At one hand some kind of analogy with Morbid Angel could be noticed, since they also showed up with a musically quite diverse record, that could be easily distinguished from the music of any other early death metal bands, marking their extraordinary future path. There's also no sign of the traditional Swedish buzzsaw sound, the album's sound is more similar to how ordinary '90s European death metal releases sounded, like the debuts of Maceration or Blasphereion. The record in total is pretty intense, and the extreme speed served as a great common ground to bond together the wildly switching heavy, thrash and death metal themes. Despite "The Book of Truth" might count  kinda weird compared to other '90s death metal releases, its weirdness and unusual methods made it quite enjoyable for long time listening.