Who remembers the death metal band Maceration? There probably aren’t many of them. The band was formed in 1990 in Denmark as a project of two Invocator members (Jakob Schultz and Jakob Hansen) and Rune Hansen and Lars Bangsholt. On their debut album, A Serenade of Agony, Dan Swano recorded vocals using his famous Day Disyraah alias. Dan Swanö and Jacob Hansen left the band after the album’s release, and then Maceration began to change their musical style towards the then fashionable groove and safely fell apart.
And on November 25th Maceration released their second album after 30 years, titled It Never Ends.The band released the single “Arcane Secrets” with the legendary Dan Swanö on vocals not only on the single, but throughout the album as well. Dan Swanö is a very famous man in the metal scene both as a musician and as a producer. I think a lot of people remember Edge of Sanity. And in general he took part in the recordings of a lot of very famous bands: Bloodbath, Diabolical Masquerade, Godgory, Katatonia, Dissection, Fleshcrawl and many others. But back to Maceration. Says guitarist Jakob Schultz:
We are back with our second album. A perfect timing, 30 years, after the debut album, and of course very important for us that the album again is featuring Dan Swanö on lead vocals. It has been a very exciting experience to record this album and get to be working with Dan again. I think this is actually the first time Dan is back growling on an album since the Edge Of Sanity days, so this is very special.
Here’s what Dan Swanö himself had to say:
At the time of the initial request I had given up singing all together, and especially growling, but since Maceration was the first album session job I ever did as a vocalist, back in 1991, I felt that I needed to be on this album, so I decided to sign on for the growling duties, as well as the sound duties, and pay my respects not only to the band for choosing me to sing on their first album, but also to finally singing on a full-on top notch HM-2 death metal release.
I must say that that it sounds so much better than I ever though possible, given that I really haven’t used this particular style of growling since the mid 90’s and combined with the awesome riffing and the world-class drumming, it sometimes teleported me back to the vibe I had when I recorded the vocals for Edge Of Sanity’s Unorthodox back in 1991.
In general, judging by the first track, the album is intended for fans of old Swedish death metal, but with a modern sound. We are waiting for the record.
