Ceremonial Oath - Carpet (1995)

   Since guitarists Anders Iwers and Jesper Strömbald also played in In Flames, and Ceremonial Oath was their side project, it wasn't surprising that by Ceremonial Oath's second album their music switched to melodic death metal. 

   '80s heavy metal themes had characteristic role in the Desecrator era and on the first record too, so they could be taken as a connecting feature. The middle '90s was also the time, when melodic death metal started to spread, originated from bands like Dissection, Unanimated, late Carcass, and the Swedish Göteborg scene. Even though by the numbers Swedish bands gave the majority, the British scene had also great influence on the subgenre, since melodic death metal basically in its most known and popular form is heavy metal with growling vocal style and heavier sound. And the Swedish scene was always famous about it's strong attraction to the '80s British heavy metal era, therefore it served as their main inspiration and main origin of influences. Probably nothing illustrates the whole thing better than "Carpet" by Ceremonial Oath. Compared to "The Book of Truth" both the death metal and technical themes were gone, the growling vocals stayed, and the quite vintage sounding heavy metal themes and melodies turned more intense by occasional speed /thrash tempo switches. Later, from the late '90s this mixed style of heavy/speed/thrash/black and melodic death metal became a commonly picked formula for Swedish bands, who wanted to recall the feeling and atmosphere of the '80s.