Rating: 8.2

Country: Sweden

Release Date: 2003

Record Label: Nuclear Winter

Track list:
1. Intro
2. Of Evil Blood [MP3]
3. The Dead Amongst
4. Blasphemic Wartorture
5. Odour of Decay

Total playing time: 11:53

Band Website: Verminous

Delve - The Dead Amongst

Germaniac - Vox & Guitar
Agge - Drums
Johan Skough - Guitar
Månster - Bass


“Everybody with a Delve release in their collection, raise your hands!”

Whenever I ask people to do this, too few do – in fact no one ever does. One could ask, why? As I see it, there are two optional answers to this extremely relevant question; 1) Everyone I've asked has been deaf, or 2) too few, do, in fact have a Delve release in their collection.

Delve has only two “official” releases on their hands, one being the 'The Dead Amongst' MCD and the other being the 'Sentenced by the Unknown' tape, both released by Nuclear Winter Recs. They are now defunct but live on in more or less the same physical and musical shape under the name Verminous (as some may have realised already, the song "Of Evil Blood" is also/even on the Verminous debut album 'Impious Sacrilege'). So, if you've heard Verminous you know what you can expect from this piece of plastic, paper and CD. If you haven't, then imagine this: Mille Petrozza was living in Stockholm around the time of the first Carnage, Nihilist, etc days and formed Kreator as a death metal band while shooting speed with Ventor and his other members (probably with more Swedish sounding names). For those who can't read between the lines then basically, this is raw, raging, ravaging, roaring death metal with some not so invisible Germanic thrash influences. Well played with fast drums, the “right” riffs, almost absence of bass and sharp throat wrenching screams about evil blood, blasphemic war torture and such stuff.

Monotonous? No. Diverse? No. Even though Delve keep their music well within the frames, they manage to stay interesting all the way through. They never stray away from the path but being the good song writers that they are they know how to make the ride interesting. Even if this only is a barely 12 minute MCD, I know some people in this ensemble can make it last a whole album through. Just listen to Verminous' debut. Great stuff. That's what you get when bands write good songs instead of trying to sound like that other band they have covered the walls of their rehearsal place with posters of.

Everyone who didn't raise your hand has some homework to do. Get into Delve (and Verminous if you didn't do that yet – shame on you!).
(Ooops… I just noticed this MCD is sold out. Well… get into Verminous!)

April 11th, 2005