Coffin Shaker: Firespawn - Shadow Realms

Firespawn is the new project of former (I guess . . .) Entombed man L. G. Petrov, and is a 'supergroup' in a horribly loose sense of the term, comprised of some guys from Necrophobic and Unleashed and a bunch of other lesser Swedeath bands. One general complaint directed at the 'supergroup' is that it takes away from releases by the proper bands, and oh man, is that the case with this.

I'm not much of a fan of the more recent Entombed records, and I wasn't very interested in the recent Entombed A.D. release. I'm not really sure what Firespawn is trying to accomplish, but this record is 42 minutes of boring. It's almost like some old school death metal guys decided to put together an old school death metal-style album because old school death metal is intermittently a thing in the underground. Bands like Horrendous and Entrails, and even one-offs like Gruesome (another 'supergroup') get some steady press and praise, so why not try to cash in on that, especially if you're from Entombed, one of the ORIGINAL old school death metal bands, all the way from the old school days?

Slower, more mid-tempo grinding tunes on here, with some interesting riffs but nothing really worth sticking around for. After hearing this a few times, my only real response was "Man, I wish Necrophobic would put out another album." Honestlly, this isn't even good for that buzz you get from any of the better OSDM projects, or from actual old school death metal. The Emperor and Lucifer Has Spoken are pretty good tunes, but there's not too much reason to keep coming back to this one.