The first wave of Death Metal in the beginning of the 1990s brought us a lot of timeless classics. One of these masterpieces that still get their regular spin is the debut album from UNLEASHED. “Where No Life Dwells” was released in 1991 and stands in line with the first albums from their country mates ENTOMBED, DISMEMBER and GRAVE as the albums that mainly defined the sound of Swedish Death Metal. Of course UNLEASHED didn’t come from out of nowhere. I guess everybody knows the story of the end of NIHILIST that resulted in the formation of ENTOMBED and left bass player Johnny Hedlund without a band. Thus Johnny formed his own with drummer Anders Schultz and guitar players Robert Sennebäck and Fredrik Lindgren: UNLEASHED. This outfit recorded two demos before signing their deal with the up and coming Century Media Records and entered the studio for the company to lay down promotional recordings with the guitar player Tomas Olsson who replaced Robert. All these three recordings have been re-released a few times already, but “Before The Creation Of Time” is the first release that features absolutely every song UNLEASHED recorded before they entered Woodhouse Studios in Dortmund for “Where No Life Dwells” in April 1991. And this historical compilation has of course gotten a special treatment from the master of remastering, Mr. Patrick W. Engel himself, who restored and remastered the material at his Temple Of Disharmony studio. Needless to say that he did a great job as always. The two demo tapes “The Utter Dark” and “…Revenge”, both released in 1990, probably never sounded better, yet they still are as raw and unpolished as most old Death Metal demo tapes back in the days. But my personal highlight still are the songs from the so-called “Bielefeld Session” that UNLEASHED recorded in December 1990 at Nobel Studios in said German town Bielefeld for promotional uses on behalf of Century Media Records. Five of these songs were properly mixed back then and used by the company to make the name of the band more popular. Two of the tracks, ‘The Dark One’ and the absolutely fantastic ‘Where Life Ends’, were released as a nowadays damn rare 7″ called “And The Laughter Has Died…”. The remaining three songs, ‘If They Had Eyes’, ‘Dead Forever’ and ‘Unleashed’ were used for the famous compilation “In The Eyes Of Death”. Both records saw the light of day prior to the release of “Where No Life Dwells”, just to bring that into line. I personally always liked the versions from the Bielefeld Session as much as the “final” versions on the album, as they are a little more unpolished and primordial. And having them all gathered on the same record is of course a fine thing to me, especially as this record also features ‘The Utterdark Revenge’ and ‘Violent Ecstacy’ who were left out and didn’t get the final mix. So this history lesson is a very worthwhile one, if you only look at the music. To make the lesson complete, we find an exclusive and long in-depth interview with Johnny Hedlund in the booklet that was made particularly for this re-release. I guess this is a fine case of value for money. So don’t hesitate to have a look at www.facebook.com/unleashed or www.facebook.com/darknessshallriseproductions