FLAGELLATION – Incinerate Disintegrate

Thornspawn was the name of the first name of the band that was formed in Sweden almost ten years ago by Per Lindström and guitarist Daniel Cannerfelt. The moniker Flagellation came as soon as Marcus Jonsson, who was the drummer of Genocrush Ferox, joined the line-up. Despite the fact that the musicians were located in different towns, they managed to record with Daniel Bergstrand in Dug-Out Studio the 3-track CD entitled Spineless Regression that was released in December of 1998.

The pretty positive response to this release and some live shows didn’t manage to hold the band together. After a while, the band entered the “freezer.”

The year of 2004 found Per and Daniel feeling anxious to get Flagellation back on track — something that did happen two years later with Teddy Möller (Loch Vostok) on the guitars and vocals and the bass player Jacob Anderson (Plague Divine) as members of the brand new line-up. The new and solid line-up got in the studio and put together the EP Incinerate Disintegrate that was available for free downloading in February of 2007. In April of the same year, Last Entertainment Records offered the Swedes the opportunity to give the EP a commercial distribution.

The human skull on the artwork implies that the EP is another Death or at least Grindcore release. This is almost affirmed as soon as “Chaos In The Flesh” takes the place of the short and pompous intro “Rendering The Apocalypse.” The track gets you literally by the throat with and almost Black Metal blast beat on the drums and some fast guitar shredding. The Death growls enter and the song visits dark territories where Deicide and Morbid Angel reign. Inside this sonic assault, listeners will notice the atmospheric keyboards and the dominating bass guitar sound that add some melody. In the next song, “Threshold To Madness,” the keyboards become more prominent while the tempo slows down a little bit without losing a single gram of the previous heaviness. The monotonous rhythm guitar riff welcomes some Industrial aesthetics and the distinct leads introduce a Progressive approach to the Classic Death Metal perspective. The track leans towards melody through the catchy chorus, a clean guitar break and the very good guitar solo. Although “Purified By Fire” delivers a headbanging galloping guitar groove and some clean backing vocals in the chorus, it sounds unfinished with an incompatible abrupt “fade out” ending. The clean backing vocals recipe is also used in the homonymous heavy and fast-paced track where there is another fine guitar solo. The album closes as it started with a short keyboard/guitar atmospheric outro entitled “Vast Desolation.”

Flagellation have made a very good EP that serves the role as a demo and introduces the band with some pretty good and original ideas. Without any doubt, these ideas and tracks need additional work to get into a full-length release where the band’s potential can be fully deployed.