Band:	Entombed A.D.
Album:	Back To The Front
Style:	Death metal
Release date:	August 04, 2014
A review by:	Doc G.

01. Kill To Live
02. Bedlam Attack
03. Pandemic Rage
04. Second To None
05. Bait And Bleed
06. Waiting For Death
07. Eternal Woe
08. Digitus Medius
09. Vulture And The Traitor
10. The Underminer
11. Soldier Of No Fortune

Now we have two Entombeds lurking around? Details on this fiasco are vague, but the most obvious scenario is that these guys were ready to do battle metal style...Which is less Braveheart meets Conan The Barbarian, and more of Judge Judy...But Judge Judy on a metal musicians budget for legal representation, which is probably something like Barry Zuckerkorn meets Lionel Hutz. Alas, Alex Hellid packed up his toys and went home, leaving the rest of the Entombed crew to release this as Entombed A.D.. Bad news for Hellid, because Back To The Front slays pretty damn hard.

What can you expect when four members of Entombed go off and record an album together? An Entombed album. Duh. It's the pinnacle of crunch meets groove you've come to expect from these death metal veterans. The riffs are, once again, the real strong point for this group. Each and every lick on Back To The Front is of hook-quality. Those are just the rhythm tracks! Many of the menacing melodic leads are delivered in odd time signatures, bringing to mind a mix between the melodies on Sadist's Season In Silence and Sodom's In War And Pieces.

Despite the incredibly thoughtful, thorough guitar work, topped with thick, slick production values Back To The Front has a faint D.I.Y aura to it derived from its simplistic approach. There's so much strong riff-writing in here they probably could have injected a bunch of filler and had two or three "ok" albums worth of material. Instead, we're presented with a tight little machine of an album that goes right for the throat and doesn't get stale. In other words; awesome riffs + strong, efficient compositions = awesome Entombed album...er...awesome Entombed A.D. album.