Seance - Fornever Laid to Rest
I wonder when Dan Seagrave will start swatting away the metal writers that keep interviewing him about his work from over 10 years ago. Luckily, he patiently and good-naturedly answered my questions about his death metal years. Seagrave’s newer covers are just as epic as his old stuff, if not more so, and he recently finished a short film called Shadowline. His interview and artwork are now up in my metal artists feature this week at Stylus.
For maximum Seagrave-ness, I thought I’d revisit Fornever Laid to Rest (Black Mark, 1992), the debut album by Sweden’s Seance. The cover is hardly Seagrave’s best work, but it’s unmistakably his style, and the album is one of the lesser-known gems in his “discography.”
Seance graduated three members to Satanic Slaughter and then to Witchery, with Patrik Jensen also joining The Haunted. However, the band itself was a force, releasing two albums of raging, old-school Swedish death metal. Fornever‘s raw, natural production captured ripping performances and righteous riffs; the album is a joy to hear, with none of today’s overcompressed bullshit.
Amusingly, the band’s original GeoCities website is still up, with awesome text like “With this album SEANCE did penatrate [sic] their fans ears to the limit,” and “Seance are still looking for a bassplayer, if you are a bassist over 22, have your own equvipment [sic] and are into the metal of death, send them a mail for more info.”
