#morbus-chron — Public Fediverse posts

It’s not uncommon for death metal musicians to mellow and prog out the longer they roam this Earth. Far from a negative connotation, enough songwriting prowess can lead to a tasteful and potent way to carry out said development. One of many collectives in this category is the Morbus Chron expanded universe. These Swedes first went from classic death metal to Sweven, which eventually led to an even proggier Sweven. Now, in a further evolution following the Law of Increasing Hippietude™, we arrive at Speglas. Although predating Sweven by some five years, it took until now for the debut full-length Endarkenment, Being & Death to come to fruition. Their goal of fusing death and black metal with heavy metal, however, has remained the same throughout. With two degrees of staff and sound separation between Morbus Chron and Speglas, where has all this evolution led to?

The Sweven presence in the lineup of Speglas is noticeable from the get go. Isak Rosemarin (Sweven, ex-Morbus Chron) acts as half of the guitar crew and all of the vocal crew, lending the album a warm but powerful, raspy growl often reminiscent of Niilo Sevänen (Insomnium). Jesper Nyrelius’s (Sweven) drumming is varied and detailed (“The Spirit Postmortem,” “Hitherto Awry”). Alexi Hedlund’s guitar and Victor Berg’s bass round out the great performances of the lineup. Musically, Endarkenment… tends to fall somewhere between Inconcessus Lux Lucis’s blackened Iron Maiden approach (sadly gone unmentioned on site until now) and Chapel of Disease’s severely underrated deathened dad rock from 2024. Fans of Tribulation’s Down Below era might find a lot to like here as well. The songwriting builds upon their preceding EPs—2015’s Birth, Dreams & Death and 2022’s Time, Futility & Death—but improves on all aspects, nailing down the vocals and crafting a memorable dual guitar tandem (“Incessant Severance,” “Dies Mali”). And while the project’s vision does precede Sweven by a lot, its instrumentation inevitably ends up feeling distantly related (“Dearth”).

Endarkenment, Being & Death by Speglas

Endarkenment, Being & Death flows seamlessly from atmospheric to intense in various styles and tempos. Iron Maiden licks run amok throughout the album’s dual-harmonized guitar work (“Dearth,” “Rage upon the Dying Fire”) of course, but they’re not carrying the record alone. Gorgeous clean guitar parts (“Ailing,” “Dearth”) and sadboi tremolos (“Dies Mali”) accompany the superb rhythm and lead guitar efforts elsewhere. Parts of “The Endarkenment” even resemble Alcest by way of Spiritual Instinct’s fantastic post-black direction. All this leads to Speglas being progressive without it getting in the way of the music. In addition, a stellar production job only lifts up the band’s great stylistic choices. Simon Söderberg’s (whose production credits surprisingly include early Ghost) placement of drums and bass in the mix deserve special mention, as it makes an already good set of instruments sound incredible. Though not a massively layered or complex album, the combination of both songwriting and production depth makes for a highly repeatable experience.

Careful pacing allows Speglas to end their experiment with a triumphant bang instead of a whimper. Though the album could benefit from showing more teeth and grit at its most aggressive, the ending one-two punch of the album in “Dies Mali” and “Rage upon the Dying Fire” is a cornerstone hard to argue against. I wouldn’t be surprised if both end up being among my Song o’ the Year finalists. As for its softer side, the beauty of “Woe” and “Ailing” won’t change the minds of people diametrically opposed to intros and interludes. Some will say Speglas’s style is too watered down, others might think it’s not watered down enough. But I think Endarkenment… strikes a great balance in between, the music being both heavy and beautiful, intricate and addictingly catchy as a result.

You don’t need to reinvent the wheel to craft something that feels fresh and exemplary. Speglas took a long while to fine-tune their writing prowess for the debut, and it paid off in spades. Endarkenment, Being & Death succeeds in its primary goal as a superb example of progressive, deathened and blackened heavy metal. Despite not featuring any cowbell, I reckon it’ll be difficult for future 2026 albums to top this one come year-end. As the final recent n00b remaining who hadn’t broken the Score Safety Counter yet, I’m glad I held out this long for something remarkable. And I wasn’t even originally in charge of covering it!

Rating: Excellent
DR: 8 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps MP3
Label: Trust No One Recordings | Bandcamp
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram
Releases Worldwide: February 27th, 2026

I’ve kicked off this year with a good old-fashioned death binge. My putrid immersion has taken me around the world so far: first to Chile, then across the Pacific to Australia, and now back across continents to Sweden. Next up is Stockholm-based duo Harrowed. Consisting of dual-threat drummer and vocalist Adam Lindmark (ex-Morbus Chron) and guitarist/bassist Tobias Alpadie (VAK and former live guitarist for Tribulation), the pair linked up through a past project to pay homage to the SweDeath sounds of olde. With only a demo and a split to their name, their debut album, The Eternal Hunger, unleashes Harrowed’s fetid disposition upon the world with a fresh edge, proving these Swedes are more than just HM-2 clones.

But rest easy—no HM-2 pedals were harmed in the making of The Eternal Hunger. Instead, Harrowed delivers enough primitive-drenched filth to satisfy any SweDeath devotee craving the crunch. Alpadie’s serrated tremolos and lacerating riffs cut like rotary blades, while Lindmark’s feverish blasts and tribal tom rolls drench highlights like “Blood Covenant” and “The Cold of A Thousand Snows” in a heavy layer of cavernous abrasion, tearing through the speakers with surgical precision. The Stockholm sound’s hardcore punk DNA is also front and center, as the duo rips through tracks like “Ultra Terrene Phantasmagoria,” “Bayonet,” and “The Reins” with high-octane skank beats and wailing dirges. Lindmark’s vocals are a caustic mix of barbaric regurgitations, adding formaldehyde-infused dressing on Harrowed’s cadaver sandwich. Tied together by a punchy production that preserves the weight of the muddy sound of yore while also maintaining a modern, nimble edge, every disgusting note on The Eternal Hunger lands with maximum impact.

The Eternal Hunger by Harrowed

The Eternal Hunger channels the spirit of ’90s-era Entombed, yet Harrowed also weaponizes influences from far beyond Swedish borders. The duo frequently abandons standard old-school formulas to explore a diverse palette of unbridled savagery. On “Blood Covenant,” Lindmark’s stampeding, guttural-punctuated rhythms and turbulent transitions coalesce with Alpadie’s blazing fretwork, leaning closer to classic thrash than typical SweDeath. Pivoting from there, “Ultra Terrene Phantasmagoria” and “The Cold of A Thousand Snows” embrace a blackened speed identity where icy tremolos, demented double-bass attacks, and progressive ride patterns imbue a sinister edge outside typical HM-2 purism. Harrowed also pulls from the American scene. “The Eternal Hunger” mirrors the swampy, gore-soaked roots of early Autopsy and Death, while the haunting, clean arpeggios driving the title track and “The Haunter” resurrect Slayer’s “Seasons in the Abyss.” Strategic moments of suspense, where the duo strips away the distorted crust in favor of suspenseful intros and bridges, only make the final blows feel more devastating as hammering half-time grooves (“Blood Covenant”) and esoteric patterns (“Formaldehyde Dreaming,” “The Reins”) work well to keep the listener off-balance.

While Harrowed’s varied songwriting is largely airtight, certain songs reveal minor cracks. “The Reins” suffers from a disjointed bridge that briefly stalls the track’s momentum, though Lindmark’s technical drumming and visceral vocal attack do well to anchor the chaos. There are also occasional moments when tracks feel like retreads, suggesting Harrowed may have hit the bottom of their bag of tricks. “Formaldehyde Dreaming,” for instance, relies on a riff set strikingly similar to those found in “Bayonet” and “The Cold of A Thousand Snows,” while the clean intro of “The Eternal Hunger” echoes “The Haunter.” Furthermore, the title track’s brooding build-up fails to deliver a proportional payoff, indicating the track would have benefited from more editing. Despite these slip-ups, however, The Eternal Hunger remains 36 minutes of grime-soaked efficiency that favors memorable songwriting over high-concept filler.

Harrowed successfully pays homage to the Swedish spirit without merely exhuming its grave. By channeling a wide-reaching spectrum of influences and pushing them through a modern SweDeath filter, they’ve created a record that is easy to like and refuses to grow stale. Much of The Eternal Hunger’s success stems from Harrowed’s balanced and varied songwriting, with Lindmark and Alpadie both pulling their weight equally to flex their creative muscle and produce material that sounds both familiar and surprisingly fresh. A debut with this much power is impressive, especially coming from only two people. If this is what the new wave of SweDeath sounds like, I’m on board—and you should be too.

Rating: Very Good!
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Dying Victims Productions
Websites: dyingvictimsproductions.bandcamp.com/album/the-eternal-hunger | facebook.com/harroweddeathmetal
Releases Worldwide: February 27th, 2026