I started the year off with a good, old-fashioned death binge. My rotten experience has taken me around the world so far: first to Chile, then across the Pacific to Australia and now back across continents, to Sweden. Next, we’ll look at the duo Harrowed from Stockholm. Composed of drummer and vocalist Adam Lindmark (formerly of Morbus Chron) and guitarist/bassist Tobias Alpadie (VAK and former live guitarist for Tribulation), the pair collaborated through an earlier project to pay tribute to the old sounds of SweDeath. With only a demo and a split to their name, their debut album, The Eternal Hunger, unleashes Harrowed‘s ugly mood on the world with a fresh hue, proving these Swedes are more than mere HM-2 clones.
But relax—no HM-2 pedals were destroyed in the making of The Eternal Hunger. Instead, Harrowed offer plenty of primitive filth to satisfy any SweDeath devotee craving crunch. Alpadie’s jagged tremolos and sharp riffs cut like rotary blades, while Lindmark’s feverish blasts and tribal tom rolls bathe highlights like “Blood Covenant” and “The Cold of A Thousand Snows” in a heavy layer of cavernous abrasion, tearing the speakers apart with surgical precision. The hardcore punk DNA of the Stockholm sound is also front and center, as the duo perform tracks like “Ultra Terrene Phantasmagoria,” “Bayonet” and “The Reins” with driving skank rhythms and mournful dirges. Lindmark’s vocals are a caustic mix of barbaric mastications, adding formaldehyde-soaked dressing to Harrowed‘s corpse sandwich. Tied together by a dynamic production that preserves the weight of the muddy sound of the past while maintaining a modern, agile hue, every disgusting note on The Eternal Hunger lands with maximum impact.
“The Eternal Hunger” channels the spirit of ’90s Entombed, yet Harrowed also harness influences from far beyond the Swedish border. The duo often abandons the typical old-school formulas to explore a varied palette of unbridled savagery. On “Blood Covenant,” Lindmark’s spastic, guttural rhythms and turbulent transitions combine with Alpadie’s burning woodcut, leaning closer to classic thrash than to typical SweDeath. From there, “Ultra Terrene Phantasmagoria” and “The Cold of A Thousand Snows” embrace a blackened identity of speed where frozen tremolos, demented double-bass attacks and progressive ride patterns lend an ominous hue outside the typical HM-2 cleanup. Harrowed also draw inspiration from the American scene. “The Eternal Hunger” reflects the swampy, blood-soaked roots of early Autopsy and Death, while the haunting, clean arpeggios that open the title track and “The Haunter” revive Slayer‘s “Seasons in the Abyss.” Strategic moments of agony, where the duo strips away the distorted crust in favor of anguished intros and bridges, make the final blows feel more devastating, as the strong mid-tempo grooves (“Blood Covenant”) and inner patterns (“Formaldehyde Dreaming,” “The Reins”) work well to keep the listener off balance.
While Harrowed‘s varied songwriting is largely airtight, some songs reveal small cracks. “The Reins” suffers from a disjointed bridge that briefly halts the track’s momentum, although the technical drumming and Lindmark’s visceral vocal assault do well to anchor the chaos. There are also occasional moments where the tracks feel like reconstructed pieces, suggesting Harrowed may have reached the bottom of their bag of tricks. “Formaldehyde Dreaming,” for instance, relies on a set of riffs strikingly similar to those found in “Bayonet” and “The Cold of A Thousand Snows,” while the clean intro of “The Eternal Hunger” echoes “The Haunter.” Moreover, the thoughtful buildup of the title track fails to deliver a proportional payoff, indicating the track would have benefited from more editing. Despite these missteps, however, The Eternal Hunger remains 36 minutes of gray delivery that favors memorable songwriting over the high concept.
Harrowed successfully pay tribute to the Swedish spirit without merely robbing the grave. Channeling a broad range of influences and passing them through a modern SweDeath filter, they’ve created a record that is easy to like and refuses to go stale. Much of The Eternal Hunger‘s success stems from Harrowed‘s balanced and varied songwriting, with Lindmark and Alpadie equally displaying their creative power and producing material that sounds both familiar and surprisingly fresh. A debut with this much power is impressive, especially coming from just two people. If this is what the new wave of SweDeath sounds like, I agree—and you should too.
Rating: Very good!
DR: 7 | Format rated: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Dying Victims Productions
Websites: dyingvictimsproductions.bandcamp.com/album/the-eternal-hunger | facebook.com/harroweddeathmetal
Releases worldwide: February 27, 2026
The review was done by Angry metal guy.
