“Four mighty contributors shaped Heavy Moves Heavy 2022. Ferox, Thus Spoke, Holdeneye, and Steel Druhm each chose the ten songs released this year that dominated our respective workouts. The resulting playlist is appended to this article. Play it straight through or set it to shuffle; HMH is designed to work either way.” Go heavy because there is no going home.
![Heads for the Dead – The Great Conjuration [Things You Might Have Missed 2022]](https://www.angrymetalguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Heads-for-the-Dead-The-Conjuring-01-768x768.jpeg)
Main Project Resorption (n): a phenomenon that occurs when a band’s side project grows so vigorously that it threatens to ingest the entity from which it sprung. I’m not ready to diagnose Sweden’s mighty Wombbath as being vulnerable to Main Project Resorption just yet, but 2022 was a banner year for the outfit’s spinoffs.” Absorb this!
“New Jersey is known for many things, few of them good. What doesn’t come to mind when one thinks of the “Garden State” is good olde fashioned Swedeath. The sketchy ne’er-do-wells in Sentient Horror are doing their very best to change that, and third album Rites of Gore is a rowdy celebration of all things Entombed-core. Along with their buzzy HM-2 fetishism, the band integrates plenty of nods to the old-school death metal sound practiced by the likes of Cannibal Corpse as well as some truly beef-brained, meatheaded grooves that would make Jungle Rot proud.” Jersey reeks of death (and landfills).
“We all know how powerful music can be, but as I meander through another twist of this mortal coil, I find myself pondering its capacity to conjure times gone by. The same way memories are summoned by the senses, certain contortions of distortion take me right back. Heads for the Dead — a supergroup comprised of members of Wombbath, Henry Kane, and Revel in Flesh; amongst others — transport me to a time when I was willing to skin knuckles over my favorite bands; a time when death metal and beer were everything and I would arrogantly inform anyone, whether they were willing to listen or not.” Back to the days of trvness and posers.
“Heavy metal, despite primarily being a possession of what we proudly call the underground, is not impervious to the revisionist proclivity of plucking from the past with genres like re-thrash, Even Newer Wave of British Heavy Metal, occult rock, and currently on the chopping block, retro-Swedish death. 2014’s EP, Interstellar Knowledge of the Purple Entity was my introduction proper to Skelethal and it just about made me turn my Fruit of the Looms into a fudge factory. At just 21 minutes, it was a perfect little window to the days of yore when Entombed and particularly Carnage were all.” The Play Doh Fudge Factory is not as fun as it sounds.
“A strange analogue runs alongside my taste in traditional Swedish death — namely, my love for the classic horror fiction circulated by American publisher EC Comics in the mid 50’s. If you’re unaware of their pulp pressings, first of all: be ashamed, and second: do yourself a favor and Google the morbid pencil-work of Graham Ingels and scare yourself up some culture. The dark yet direct content of that material emphasized familiar characteristics I would soon come to recognize in the Stockholm death metal scene, infamous for its D.I.Y. brand of incipient malcontent, braced by a dirge of funeral winds and sci-fi malice aforethought.” Hello and goodbye again.
“‘Tis the tide of Yule and if you’re anything like me, you might find yourself wondering just what might be malingering under the tree in those sinister rhomboidal shapes… If you’re exactly like me, then you too must be hoping for some filthy Swedeath to furnish the festive season. Now if your partner hasn’t taken it upon themselves to wrap up a platter of Scandinavian malignancy, then fear not because Sentient Horror are the D-Beasts for you, arriving just in time to plunder Christmas with that smooth Stockholm sound.” You know Santa’s on his way. He’s loaded lots of horrors in his sleigh.
