The epic opening of Livets Strängar Dödsackord sets the stage with an opening that could have been on a 90s Hypocrisy album before going off into a full fledged black thrash attack. Nad sounds like Driller Killer, Wolfbrigade and Darkthrone in a gangbang and will leave you with bleeding ears. Gloria Runt Iris has a killer death metal riff mixed in with crazy chaotic d-beat and even a melodic guitar line to keep things interesting and these three opening songs pretty much set the album up in truly awesome fashion.

The rest of the album doesn’t disappoint either. There are no dull moments and most importantly for a band with the label of crust somewhere in the music, each one of these songs has a distinct quality about them. 6 Grader Till Helvetet even has a guitar solo that sounds vaguely inspired by Desultory. Vanmakt is another song with a slow opening riff and some keyboards in the background that gives it an epic feel before going off into a harsh and dissonant but strangely melodic and always crusty take on black metal. This should just sound like noise but somehow the band manages to pull this off.

The band also does a sterling job in mixing up the tempo. Yes, most of the riffs operate on fast or faster speeds but the song writing dynamic of Martyrdod is quite impressive and the mixing and matching of various extreme metal styles works superbly.
Sekt is a noisy album. Even for fans of extreme metal a certain appreciation of crust and d-beat and bands like Driller Killer and Wolfbrigade is necessary to really appreciate this band and their seamless integration of a whole lot of styles.

For Martyrdod, it looks like this is the magic of the third album. While they have always been impressive, with Sekt the band sound on top of their game and have come up with an exceptional collection of songs that should leave you with your ears bleeding and huddled in the corner of the room. At the same time, there’s something infectious about this music that makes me listen to it almost compulsively and at the end of the day, Martyrdod has come up with an album that is intensely heavy, chaotic, noisy and yet somehow also very memorable. The faint of heart need not bother but if your tastes run to the very extreme then Martyrdod’s Sekt should be right up your alley.

The album comes with 12 bonus tracks including the long out of print debut of the band in its entirety.

Label - La Familia / Farewell Records

Year of Release - 2009