Nightmares Made Flesh

Swedish death metal supergroup Bloodbath arrive at their third release, 2004's Nightmares Made Flesh, having both reshuffled (drummer, now guitarist Dan Swanö making way for Satanic Slaughter/Witchery man Martin Axenrot) and exchanged (Opeth vocalist Mikael Åkerfeldt for top producer and multi-band member Peter Tägtgren) some of its all-star team -- the result of understandable constraints of time and other-band responsibilities. Not that this is a problem, mind you, since Bloodbath's raison d'être remains essentially the same: to provide an informal venting place for these musicians' most primal, death/black metal aggressions, as typified most of their early career projects, but which have generally become less integral to their more recent and, shall we say, more refined extreme metal pursuits. And, if anything, this latest Bloodbath configuration has managed to come up with an album that's all the more ferocious and overpowering in nature than its predecessor, if that's possible. Wi