I hate to discredit the anti-trend section of the Metalhead Manifesto, but the truth is that we're not always as against-the-grain as we'd like to think we are. Retro is all the rage in the mainstream these days, and a quick glance at the current state of metal will reveal a startling similarity in our own community's current preferences. While popular culture cannibalizes the 1960s and early '70s for sound and image, metal has been feasting with equal fervor on the corpse of early-to-mid-'80s thrash. Everywhere you look, be it on review sites, in metal mags or in tour lineups, there's a quartet of young guns in painfully tight jeans and vests "keepin' the spirit of dirty denim thrash alive, man!" This last bit roughly translates into "We're going to bore the poo out of you by reviving, with no variation whatsoever, perhaps the single most one-dimensional sound in the history of all things hard, fast and loud." There's also the less spotlighted retro death metal genre, led by bands like Hail of Bullets, Facebreaker and the focus of this week's edition, Bloodbath.

While you might be quick to call out the latter genre on the same faults as the former, there are a few important differences, ones that grant old-school death metal a little more street cred. First and foremost, unlike pure Bay Area thrash, the luminaries of pure Swedish death metal (Entombed, Dismember) never really went away, whereas in the past few years leading up to the current craze, every major and minor thrash band who ever recorded more than two songs reunited after a decade or more. Second, the newer bands leading the retro-death movement tend to feature members who were either part of the original scene during its golden era (Hail of Bullets boasts veterans of metal from Pestilence, Gorefest and Thanatos), or were at least old enough to remember and actually absorb its music. The members of Warbringer, arguably the leaders of this whole retro-thrash initiative, were still learning how to poop while Slayer was shredding eardrums.

Even with added credibility, the retro game is a tricky one, and you basically have two options. One, you play your chosen style to a T and hope that despite your blatant lack of originality, fans will come to embrace your precision, enthusiasm and earnest love for the genre. Or two, you pay musical tribute to your forebears while simultaneously incorporating a more diverse and engaging musical vocabulary into the prescripted template. Most bands who play this game fail because the first option is very tempting (humans are skilled at deluding themselves), and the second one is almost impossible to achieve without copious amounts of creativity and years of musical expertise (the latter of these two requirements, again, sorely lacking in the retro-thrash scene).

Fortunately, Sweden's retro-death metal supergroup Bloodbath have managed to play the game and come out winners, though they didn't exactly play by the rules. Formed in 1999 by Swedish metal really really heavyweights Mikael ekerfeldt (Opeth), Anders "Blakkheim" Nystrim (Katatonia), Jonas Renske (Katatonia) and Dan Swano (every Swedish death metal band ever), Bloodbath began as a goofy side project. It was at first a few progressive personalities paying tribute to their teen years with a few tracks of fuzzy-buzzy, knuckle-dragging death metal complete with a tongue-in-cheek gore image and lyrics to boot. The three tracks that made up their debut EP were pleasantly titled "Breeding Death," "Furnace Funeral" and "Ominous Bloodvomit." Fun, right?

The follow-up album, Resurrection Through Carnage (2002), was largely the same Sunlight Studios (the facility for death metal production circa 1991) worship, but with a level of composition worthy of the members' other, more elite outfits. The next release, Nightmares Made Flesh (2004), featuring Hypocrisy's Peter TNgtgren (dude, get some more vowels) on vocals, was just as solid, but put the band at a bit of a crossroads, mixing, sometimes unevenly, their old-school ethos with more modern death metal tendencies like precision blast beats and a cleaner production. However, third time around, Bloodbath has hit the zombie in the brain with The Fathomless Mastery, a merciless mix of old-school influences and modern songwriting ethos that finally grants the band a sound it can call its own.

Hitting the play button, I was overjoyed to hear that the sickening grit missing from the Nightmares guitar tone is back and as vicious as ever. While most bands try to impress you with their opening track, "At the Behest of Their Death" sounds like it wants to reach through the speakers and stab your ass to hell. Eschewing any sort of ambient intro, the track lunges forth with a shrieking tremolo riff. It's a beautiful moment, one that says "Bloodbath wants to kill you."

They continue in this fashion for the rest of the album. Guitarists Nystrim and new addition Per "Sodomizer" Eriksson (his name, not mine), finally at ease in their choice of sound, deliver blood buckets of twisted, slithering and filthy riffage culled from both the Scandinavian and American schools of death metal. There's no lack of variety, either. For every tornado of blast-beaten fury ("Drink from the Cup of Heresy," "Treasonous"), there are slower, almost groovy hymns of seething evil like "Devour the Feeble" and my personal favorite, "Mock the Cross." They even delve into the new school of Meshuggah-inspired, odd-time riffing on the eerie "Iesous." It's this diverse array of influences and tributes, all delivered with a level of compositional expertise culled from the members' other, more progressively minded acts that elevate Bloodbath within the genre.

Not to be forgotten, the rest of the band delivers equally monumental performances. The returning Mikael ekerfeldt still possesses the flat-out coolest voice in death metal, granting every lyric a deadly level of infectiousness. I've already frightened more than a few people on campus while walking about grunting the chorus of "Mock the Cross" to myself. Drummer Martin Axenrot burns equally hot, demonstrating a deadly understanding of how the riff and the beat interplay and affect each other with shift cymbal work array of textures. Oh yeah, and somewhere under all this, Jonas Renske is probably playing something on bass that we'll never hear.

Albums like this remind me why I love death metal so much, and this record is a contender for my top 10 list for this year, for sure. Do yourself a favor: Pick this one up quickly and start bathing in blood.