Sarcasm
Stellar Stream Obscured

“Originally formed in Sweden in 1987, Sarcasm would release blistering Death Metal throughout the early and mid-90’s” is this Sarcasm from the label? Considering that the official debut album by Sarcasm was released in 2016, this is after they reformed in 2015. They only had an EP before that, and plenty of demos and compilations. They are according to the press sheet one of the oldest still active death metal bands from Sweden, that is also a little dubious considering that they were inactive between 1997 and 2015 so their active career is about 17 years now, there are plenty of Swedish death metallers that have been active for longer than that. But usually, one tends to overlook the inactive periods, so if you consider that they probably are one of the oldest.

Classic death metal with black metallish styled vocals, brutal styled riffs and smattering drums, sluggishly slow vocals. Sci-fi theme is cool. The cover looks pretty dull, the originality of the album is not much to write home about, neither is the productions. In fact, if you look at it closely it is obvious that Sarcasm offers nothing original, just another one of those death metal releases. Then again, death metal isn’t about innovation or fresh thinking, usually that makes the fans go bananas and claim their old heroes as sellout or whatever. Sarcasm probably doesn’t risk any of that as they keep up the tradition of unoriginal old-school death metal.

Stellar Stream Obscured is a good enough album, you can listen to it and feel its allure. But soon enough you start to consider its place in the world of music, and you start to think of how many better albums there are, and before the album is finished you have thought of hundreds of album titles that are better in the death metal genre. And towards the end of this album you also realise that you don’t really find it amusing, but rather it is dull and you feel the urge to change to another album, any album will do.

Fans of the death metal genre might find this album rather interesting, but I doubt it will go down particularly well with most music fans. I can’t really recommend this one, there are just too many choices that are so much better. I didn’t even write anything sarcastic about a band with such a name, but it may be hard to do considering that their name is what they do best.

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