DESULTORY from Sweden was one of the bands, who started out by the end of the 80s as a classic Death Metal outfit in the vein of ENTOMBED, DISMEMBER etc., but soon found their own sound within these trademarks and after three demos and a compilation release on the classic label House of Kicks they got signed to Metal Blade. After the very good debut "Into Eternity", DESULTORY reached their peak in 1994 in form of their second album "Bitterness". This time everything was perfect and the release turned out really great. Starting with the cover artwork by Kristian Wahlin, followed by a very good production of Tomas Skoksberg in the mighty Sunlight Studio, completed by nine perfect songs, where no single filler was included. The opener ‘Life Shatters’ starts with the typical Swedish Death Metal sound, completed by slight Thrash Metal traces and the unique voice of Klas Morberg, before DESULTORY shows the difference to their before played style. A taste of Gothic Death Metal started to show up in their sound and in the second half of ‘Life Shatters’, warm melodies, that bands like AMORPHIS or CEMETARY included in their music. Lead guitarist Stefan Pöge really managed to write and play melodies, that you really can feel the warmth of Swedish summer nights. The second track ‘Left Behind’ is an uptempo track with same warm lead melodies but more Thrash influenced with partly Hardcore styled vocals. ‘A Closing Eye’ is the next perfect track showing their huge songwriting qualities, with an outstanding bass line and again a very warm lead melody. The fourth track ‘Taste Of Tragedy’ is again an uptempo track, showing their roots of classic Swedish Death Metal, again with such a killer lead melody in the middle part, totally outstanding track. ‘Bleeding’ is a slower track, again pure melodic Swedish Death Metal, same goes for ‘Among Mortals’ before ‘Enslaved’ again is uptempo Death Metal once more with the perfect drumming of Thomas Johnson and again the good and unique vocals of Klas Morberg. ‘Winter’, long time was my favourite track of the album and indeed is the perfect soundtrack for dark and cold winter nights with another perfect melody of Stefan Pöge. The last track ‘Cold Bitterness’ closes this chapter of DESULTORYs history with faster Death Metal tunes. After this release DESULTORY went on a small tour to support AMORPHIS on their first "Tales From The Thousand Lakes" tour and after that, Stefan Pöge left the band and a big hole in their sound, that the band could not close on the following album. So, from 1996 to 2010 DESULTORY was put on ice and the remaining members continued as ZEBULON with a different sound for some years. As bonus to this nice Pulverised Records re-release, Mr. Dan Swanö remastered the album and also the tracks of their two classic demos "Death Unfolds" and "Visions" from the original DAT tapes. The album itself was only carefully remastered, not changing the classic Sunlight sound, while the demos never sounded any better and you get the best tracks of their first album "Into Eternity" for free, in a far rawer condition but in case somebody does not know the debut, it is a good possibillity to check these fine tunes and the roots of the band out. "Bitterness" will always remain in my personal alltime Top 20. Highly recommended. More details about the band at: www.facebook.com/pages/desultory/50447918404, www.pulverised.net