He Who Shall Not Bleed

He Who Shall Not Bleed is the third album, arriving four years on, and so far the last. Jocke Göthberg sings, Hans Nilsson drums, Daniel Antonsson and Jesper Strömblad play: since every one of them had a main band elsewhere, a four-year gap was inevitable. A long silence followed. A reunion was announced in 2014 and a slot at the next year's Gothenburg Sound Festival was booked, but family circumstances forced them to pull out. The approach — cutting riffs and explosive speed — is unchanged, and the twelve tracks extend the line of the first two. Across three albums this band never once let go of the idea that velocity would carry everything. The details carry a joke or two. The sample opening the title track is a line delivered by James Gregory in the film Beneath the Planet of the Apes. “A Paler Shade of White (A Darker Side of Black)” is surely a nod to Procol Harum's “A Whiter Shade of Pale.” And the record closes on a cover of the Bee Gees' “Stayin' Alive.” Given that the first album's title punned on Saturday Night Fever, that choice settles a twelve-year-old debt. It looks like clowning — but the playing never slackens for a second.