Silent Night Fever

Silent Night Fever is the first full album from a band that Jesper Strömblad of In Flames and Glenn Ljungström, a former guitarist in the same band, started as a side project in 1995 — and it took them seven years to reach it. The singer is Joakim “Jocke” Göthberg, formerly Marduk's drummer; the drummer is Hans Nilsson, previously of Liers in Wait and Diabolique. The four split in 1998, regrouped in 2000, and cut this at Phlat Planet in autumn 2001. Regain and Century Media issued it jointly in May 2002. The title puns on John Travolta's Saturday Night Fever. There is no joke in the music. Nine tracks run about thirty minutes and not one passes four and a half. From the strike of “Silent Night Fever” through the chop of “The Murder-Inn” to the sprint of “Through the Virgin Sky,” the two guitars drive constantly forward while Nilsson's drums fire like a machine gun. Göthberg's roar still carries the residue of black metal. This is early-1990s Gothenburg deliberately played again in the 2000s, closing on the strange “Slow Silence.”