Entombed’s Most Divisive Album and Why I Love It
When a band diverges from the sound that made them beloved, it’s always a contentious move. While it can lead to great commercial success (see Metallica’s 1991 self-titled album, which was slower and more accessible than their previous thrash work and scored the band their first chart-topper), it risks alienating the devoted fanbase who fell in love with an entirely different style of music. However, when done right, a radical new direction can bring a band to even greater heights. Such was the case for Swedish band Entombed, who, with two fantastic death metal albums under their belt, changed course and released something even better.
Wolverine Blues is the third studio album by Entombed, formed in 1987 as Nihilist. Though this incarnation of the band was short-lived, Nihilist left an indelible mark on the burgeoning Swedish death metal scene. Leif Cuzner’s ‘buzzsaw’guitar tone, created by turning all the knobs on his Boss HM-2 distortion pedal up to maximum, proved particularly influential. After recording three demos, the band split up on the 30th of August, 1989, due to tensions with bassist Johnny Hedlund. They reformed just a few days later, without Hedlund, and changed their name to Entombed.
Left Hand Path, the band’s 1990 debut album, is a brutal masterpiece which became instantly revered in the death metal underground. Their 1991 follow-up Clandestine continued in the same vein, establishing a distinctly Swedish sound within the genre. However, Wolverine Blues is markedly different from Entombed’s first two albums. Veering away from the straightforward death metal of Left Hand Path and Clandestine, it adopts the hooks and more conventional verse-chorus structure of hard rock, while retaining the heavily distorted guitar and ferocious vocals that set them apart from tamer bands. Death metal was rapidly evolving in the 1990s, becoming increasingly progressive and virtuosic, and it was clear Entombed’s path was diverging from the developing Floridian scene. Wolverine Blues had much more in common with the red-blooded midtempo groove of Pantera’s Vulgar Display of Power than the sophisticated, technical Individual Thought Patterns by Death.
The album marked the return of Lars-Göran Petrov, who joined the band in 1988 and served as the vocalist on Left Hand Path. Petrov started his music career as the drummer of Morbid, a band which also featured Per ’Dead’ Ohlin, prior to his time with Norwegian black metal legends Mayhem, as vocalist. After the release of Entombed’s debut album, Petrov was ousted from the band for coming on to drummer Nicke Andersson’s girlfriend. Andersson provided the vocals on their follow-up album Clandestine, with Johnny Đorđević filling the role on tour. While Andersson is a phenomenal drummer, his vocals are satisfactory but lacking in much-needed brutality, making Petrov’s comeback a most welcome one. This time, Andersson sticks to the drums, playing remarkably, especially on the opener ‘Eyemaster’.
You may notice my consistent description of Petrov as a ’vocalist’, as opposed to a ’singer’. This is because his usage of his voice on this album cannot be accurately described as singing: yelling, bellowing or roaring would be more fitting verbs. The animalistic aggression of his performance anchors Entombed to their extreme roots and brilliantly serves the forceful, often antisocial lyrics. When Petrov howls, ‘Welcome to the real world!’ during the searing ‘Rotten Soil’, he sounds like a man possessed.
The song that best sums up the appeal of Wolverine Blues is the title track. Its thundering drums, catchy guitar and primal vocals are everything I love about the album. ‘Wolverine Blues’ runs at a blistering two minutes and thirteen seconds, and its brevity makes it unique on the album, with most of the songs somewhere in the three-minute range. The longest song on the album is ‘Contempt’, at four minutes and thirty-two seconds. ‘Contempt’ has a slower tempo, taking longer to build, but this makes the payoff all the more satisfying. Its formidable guitar intro is one of my favourite moments on the album, perfectly setting the scene for what follows. Petrov barks the nihilistic lyrics, and the song ends with a fantastic guitar part and more great drumming from Andersson.
The rest of the band’s lineup consists of Alex Hellid and Uffe Cederlund on guitar and Lars Rosenberg on bass. There are infectious riffs all over the album, with a personal standout being ‘Blood Song’. I wasn’t too keen on it initially, feeling it was outclassed by the rest of the stellar material on the record, but I’ve come to like it a lot. Petrov rhymes ‘desire’, ‘higher’ and ‘fire’, which wouldn’t be out of place in a cheesy pop song, but he makes it sound menacing. The part near the end where he puts on a voice resembling a demonic version of Scooby-Doo is still a little funny no matter how many times I listen to it, but it leads to the fearsome return of the desire/higher/fire rhyme, which is thoroughly enjoyable.
Much has been made of Entombed’s pivot to death ‘n’ roll, but it seems listeners have lost a lot more sleep over it than the band themselves. When asked in a 2008 interview with Metal Chaos if he thought the label did justice to the band’s sound, Petrov seemed indifferent. ‘We see it as Entombed music, if people see that as death ‘n’ roll so be it. We just laugh, death ‘n’ roll, why not? When we write songs, we aren’t thinking it has to be a particular style.’
Personally, I am glad Entombed did not force themselves to try to recreate Left Hand Path over and over, with inevitably diminishing results. Wolverine Blues marked an exciting new chapter for the band’s sound, and it was clearly the right direction for them to take. I think the way the change of sound on this album is spoken about is heavily dramatic – it is not as if Entombed turned into Bon Jovi overnight. The album is still raw and aggressive, but it shows a band unafraid to evolve and progress. It may not appeal to staunch death metal purists, but it is one of my favourite albums of all time. I have listened to it countless times, and I never find its potency and enjoyability to diminish.
Originally published in edition 11 of the Wallace Times, 18/12/25.