Murder Squad - Ravenous Murderous (Vinyl LP)

In 2001 Death Metal had been in steady decline for many years. The genre once gloriously notorious for stillbirthing some of the vilest filth imaginable had been watered down by harmlessness and mediocrity.
It was exactly at this time that MURDER SQUAD breathed much-needed foul air into a scene so desperately lacking dirt and danger.
Spawned by members of some of the most revered Swedish Death Metal bands (ENTOMBED, DISMEMBER, MERCILESS etc.) and driven by their shared passion for intoxication and, above all, American Death Metal band AUTOPSY, the four Swedes would go on to vomit forth two full-lengths and one EP before withdrawing into the nasty hole they crawled out from.

Again, adorned by a disgustingly beautiful cover by the late Timo Ketola, MURDER SQUAD’s second album, Ravenous Murderous, from 2003 still has AUTOPSY-worship written all over it. But while the predecessor was literally made up of riffs that were almost identical or at least very similar to the ones found in AUTOPSY tracks, Ravenous Murderous feels more like an unreleased AUTOPSY album than a different band paying tribute to AUTOPSY. This time around MURDER SQUAD have even been supported in the studio by legendary Chris Reifert of AUTOPSY himself contributing vocals, guitars and drums. These joined efforts resulted in a very dark Death Metal album coming with pleasantly politically incorrect lyrics certain to upset today’s moral police.