With Winter Comes Despair

Sapremia have been around almost 20 years now, having formed in 1991. After releasing two demos in the early 90s, the band went on an extended hiatus before regrouping recently. With Winter Comes Despair is their first full-length release and while not coming close to reinventing the wheel, it's solid brutal death metal in the Cannibal Corpse/Nile mould. Of course, being such an underground they simply can't afford the kind of thick, crushing production job needed for such music, and unfortunately it kind of hamstrings the album a little. That gripe aside, how do the actual songs hold up? Surprisingly well, in fact. From the movie samples that open it, it is clear we are in the land of defiantly old school death metal, with the odd chugging, mid paced thrash riff scattered in here and there along with a few insidious melodies. Open Grave throws an assault of blasting aggression at you, swiftly followed by Forgotten Paradise that offers in a similar vein. Good sure, but is this enough to stay fresh for a whole album? Luckily, it's at this point that Sapremia show us they have more to offer. The Despair Of Winter starts out slow and pounding, with a sinister, heavily Slayer influenced melody running through it. Close your eyes, and it could almost be 1990. The song shifts gears abruptly into something far more frenetic, with shades of the legendary Death. It's one of the more complex, progressive songs here, and show that Sapremia have plenty more strings to their bow. Indeed, as the record goes on things get a little more complex, the band changing from sinister tremelo riffs to mid paced chug on a dime. But it's no Psycroptic record of course. This is solidly rooted in the same old-school death metal scene the band were once a part of, albeit given a modern lick of paint. The fact that a band once consigned to the depths of obscurity can come back after a 10+ period of dormancy and make a high quality death metal album like With Winter Comes Despair. It's not perfect in the slightest, no. It can feel a bit workmanlike at times and perhaps could do with a bit more of that special spark, but it sets out to make brutal death from the days of yore, and succeeds. In a year which has thrown up some great death metal releases from the likes of Decrepit Birth, lets hope that With Winter Comes Despair doesn't get lost in the crowd. And lets hope it doesn't take 10 years for the next one, eh?