Along with Abscession’s Rot of Ages, the best Swedish-styled HM 2 album I heard last year was the second effort from Italy’s Organic. The follow-up to 2019s solid debut Carved in Flesh, delivers everything a sophomore album should; improving on a fine debut with improved songwriting and confidence delivered a tried tested, and popular sound with killer results.

Lukas Flarer again delivers a stout HM2 sound with a thick chainsaw buzz and throbbing bass while vocalist Maxi Careri renders perfectly done gruff growls, not to ‘broodle’, not to raspy. And behind it all, thick, classic riffs inspired by the big three of the genre; Entombed (feral canters), Grave (thick grooves), and Dismember (slicing melodies), though newer bands like Entrails can be heard here as well. The end result is a killer album that can go to toe to toe with their modern peers like the aforementioned Entrails, Demonical, Abscession and such.

“Ropedragger” starts with gorgeous church choirs before erupting into an urgent, Dismember-styled hack and slash number with little mercy given. The monstrous second track “Waste Monolith” displays the Grave influence with a thunderous late song groove and lurch to die for. The start and end of the 6 plus minute “Schizophrenic Execution” slow things down with a steady militant mid-paced, slower gaits, so three songs in to start the album you get a little of everything. There’s good stuff later in the album as well with a killer mid-song lumber in “Caged in Tomb”, the somber last half of the title track, “The Howling”, which has a virtually perfect genre-riffic gallop that I had to research and make sure it was a cover, it was so fucking  spot on.

Not quite as diverse or Edge of Sanity influenced as Abscession’s, Rot of Ages, (there are no clean vocals or moody breaks) Where Graves Abound is a more direct, savage salvo that goes for the throat and delivers exactly what a second album should with a very nice, better follow up. I can’t wait to see what the all important album #3 brings.

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