Despite being around since 1991 and releasing 8 decent eight albums, Sweden’s Centinex were always sort of an after thought in the Swedish death metal scene of the early 90s, especially since after the first couple of albums the band sorted of cleaned up their sound to be more melodic and with a blacker sheen. The band called it quits after 2005’s World Declension and the members scattered to other solid Swedish death metal bands like Interment and Demonical.

Despite having reviewed three Centinex albums for Digitalmetal.com, (Diabolical Desolation, Decadence -Prophecies of Cosmic Chaos and the aforementioned World Declension) and own all of the bands albums, but I can safely say I can’t recall any song from any of the albums, so this long delayed reunion hardly made me tremble. However, founding member Martin Schulman has taken some time off from Demonical to revive Centinex (along with former drummer Kennet Englund, fellow Demonical guitarist Sverker Widgrun and powerful Volturyon vocalist Alexander Högbom) in this current era of Swedeath revival with some relative success.

And the album moniker, Redeeming Filth is somewhat apt. Using a crunchy, burly Ronnie Björnström (Revolting, Aeon, Feral, Bodyfarm, Ribspreader) mix/master, the album is somewhat redeeming and filthy, akin to the band’s early throes as opposed to the cleaner, more melodic slice n dice of the bands later releases that more resembled Naglfar and Necrophobic (who or course themselves shifted from classic death metal to black/death metal), and toyed with more cyber and celestial sounds and themes.

And while it might be easy to accuse Schulman and co of merely jumping on the current revival’s band wagon, the collective experience of the members makes Redeeming Filth a pretty solid affair consistent with the band’s I mentioned above that Ronnie Björnström has worked with. It’s not as simplistic as the Rogga Johanssen stuff,and certainly has strains of the vocalist’s main band, Volturyon, but it’s  undeniably old school and Swedish. 

The guitar tone is big and crunchy, having a more modern take on the classic Swedish tone akin to Bodyfarm or again, Volturyon, as opposed to a forced retro tone. And the riffs have some good old fashioned speed  (“When Bodies are Deformed”,”Death Glance”, “Bloodraze” ) but the focus is on big, burly double bass grooves that recall recent Grave releases (particularly the likes of “Moist Purple Skin”, “Stone of Choice”, “Rotting Below” and Dead “Buried and Forgotten”-which initially I thought was a cover of Hypocrisy’s “Take the Throne” from Penetralia), but with a bigger modern sheen.

But as with the band’s entire discography, this isn’t really a special or overwhelming releases on par with some of the band’s revivalist country mates like Entrails or Putereaon, or even on par with the last couple of Demonical releases. But it is a solid, no frills listen and being the completionist that I am,  I’m sure ill purchase it and put it right next to my other Centinex releases to gather dust.

[Visit the band's website]

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