BRODER
BRODER “Skarpretterfossilet”
By Dr. Abner Mality
Imagine the windswept tundras of the last ice age 12,000 years ago. A band of primitive Cro-Magnon, on the hunt for mammoth, stumble across a full sets of amps, guitar, drums and mikes magically transported from our age. As if possessed, they grab the instruments and start to jam. The result is “Skarpretterfossilet”.
This is about as stone age as heavy metal can get. It really does sound like metal played by prehistoric hunters. There’s good and bad in that. For one thing, it sounds like cavemen really did mix and master this thing. The drummer must have put a thick coating of toilet paper on his sticks, because the drum sound is muffled and lacks any deep tones. There’s a constant fuzzy buzz over everything that makes it sound like moss has grown on the guitars. And if you’re looking for ANY kind of musicianship or advanced playing here, forget it. This is the wooden club level of sophistication.
BRODER are the two Swedish Hvild brothers (hence the band name) and they’ve sure come up with something odd here. The style is a kind of full blast war metal mixed with super-primitive HELLHAMMER type riffs and a sort of prehistoric “soundtrack” of what sounds like a tribe having a brutal feast (maybe of other humans?). If you really like primitive death metal and even punk, you could find the crude power of this project. Strangely enough, last track “Byldemor”, which goes for 15 minutes plus, is the most interesting, as it never gets into a rut and constantly moves from sludgy doom to raging war metal, with even an attempt at gang choruses and lead guitar. There’s a protracted bit of that “soundtrack” in the last third, but it ends with grooving doom.
Frankly, the production here didn’t need to be so crude. Some bassy bottom and a better drum sound would have helped this immeasurably in the “punch” department. Yet BRODER don’t seem to want that...they stay completely true to the “caveman” style here and while that hurts in some ways, it makes “Skarpretterfossilet” a very unique listen.