In the summer of '89 Merciless recorded their first
album "The Awakening". Before that the band had been
doing some demos, the first one "Behind The Black Door"
came in 87. After that demo Kåle left the band and the
new singer was Rogga. After the first record was out,
the band played a lot of shows with bands like Entombed,
Dismenber, Count Raven, and also the Brazilian band
Sepultura on their "Beneath The Remains" tour. Merciless'
second record "The Treasures Within" was recorded in '91
but was not relesed until the year after. Then the
drummer was tired of waiting for the record to be
released, so in '92 a new drummer, Peter Stjärnvind
(Unanimated/Entombed) replaced Stefan Carlsson. In the
begining of '93 the band did a tour in Scandinavia
together with Entombed. The same year they recorded
their third album, "Unbound" with producer Dan Swanö at
his Unisound Studios. Tired of the lack of support from
the record company, Merciless lost the inspiration to
go on. In the start of '94 the band did a show before
they decided to take a long break.
Rating 4,5/10
Reviewed by: Anders Sandvall
Merciless
Merciless was one
of the first underground Death/Thrash metal bands in
Sweden. Inspired of the early fast-playing bands like
Kreator, Sodom, and Destruction the band was formed in
the summer of 1986 in Strängnäs Sweden by:
Erik Wallin-guitar
Fredrik Karlén-bass
Stefan Carlsson-drums
Kåle-lead vocals
However, in '95 they preformed on the Slayer tribute
record "Slaytanic Slaughter" with the song "Crionics".
In '99 the first album was released on Osmose productions
then Merciless were offered to do a lot of shows and
started to rehearse again. After some more successful
shows Merciless decided to start working on a new album.
In 2002 they finally entered Dog Pound Studios in
Stockholm Sweden.
The band has 10 tracks with fast and hard thrash/death
metal on the new album, there are some calmer passages
in some of the songs but mostly they stick to hard and
fast metal. The sound is not updated to 2000, it sounds
like they still are back in the 80´s, the soundpicture,
the songs and the production sound extremly 80´s.
Merciless plays standard death/trash metal and it´s
nothing new about them or their music. If you like 80´s
death/trash metal you should check this out, but I´m
not impressed at all, the only thing I like on this
record is Peter Stjärnvind's drumming.