Metal Underground.com

My first thought upon hearing "Anomia 1" was that "Bokor" must be Swedish for "Mastodon." I say that because this album has that same sense of wild experimentation and musical mastery that fueled Mastodon's "Blood Mountain" and "Crack The Skye." This is music that challenges your sensibilities while providing neck-breaking heaviness.

The opening track, "Crawl - The Sermons And Dreams Of John Duncan Thunstall," begins with heavy guitars by Fredrik "Lillis" Johansson and Thomas Eriksson that slowly become more melodic, but never completely lose their crushing groove. Lars Carlberg's vocals on this track are a thing of beauty. He's got one of the better voices I've heard in metal in a long time, capable of screaming quite well, but also doing the melodic thing really well. On "Crawl," he alternates between the two, literally in the same breath.

One thing that impressed me the most about listening to the album was the combination of styles the band brought to the table. There's a little death metal in the vocals now and then, mixed with a little thrash in the guitars. Then, there are the influences flung far afield of metal. I scoffed a bit when I read "country" as one of the music artforms admired by the band on its web site. Then, I heard the opening few minutes of "Migrating," with its shuffling beat and Eriksson's lead guitar sounding almost like a steel guitar. To be sure, the song never takes a complete trip to Nashville, but it was fun to think about a metal band from Sweden being influenced by those sounds. It's also fun to hear how that sound turns into bone crushing metal midway through, without missing a beat.

I also admire this band for taking full advantage of its quiet moments. On "Best Trip," for example, as the guitars play a splendidly simple clean-tone riff, you can hear Rickard Larsson's more complex bass part underneath as a great counterpoint.

I don't really have many negative things to say about the album, except that maybe the 14-and-a-half-minute "Migrating" could've been tightened up a bit. My main gripe, honestly, was that after six songs in 44 minutes, I still wanted more — and that's not a bad problem to have.

If you're looking for metal that successfully incorporates a wide variety of styles and sounds, Bokor's "Anomia 1" is the album for you.