Graveyard - One with the Dead (2009)

   Graveyard debuted as a band with traditional old school Swedish death metal features, and they performed this style so well that nobody would suspect that they're not even from Sweden. 
   Like if the nearly endless amount of nearly the same sounding old school Swedish death metal bands were not enough, many newbies showed up at various locations to try themselves in the style of the well known classics of the genre. The names of these classics are waving back while listening as evident influences, such as Grave, Carnage, Entombed and Unleashed. Still, Graveyard's goal was not to simply copy this style and to create a schematic death metal album. Plenty of exciting musical solutions are waiting for the listener to pull it down to the hopeless rotten catacombs. For the band heaviness had a main importance on the side of the rough, dirty cold sound, and they managed it with sommon slow downs and sudden speed switches. Sometimes repetitive sick leading melodies are assisting to the intensiveness that's the main feature of the album. The temporary slow downs doesn't take anything from this intensity because of the diverse themes they've operated with. So even though the band's style is (tomb)stone carved Swedish death, "One with the Dead" is everything but monotonous. Similar to the late tendencies of Swedish death, occasionally some quite vintage sounding heavy and doom metal elements (the second in the form of a Candlemass cover) are also there to find. They've really tried everything possible that made this notorious.