Review: Dead Sleep - Repulsion | ANTICHRIST Magazine

I threw this on expecting some decent Swedish thrash and ended up liking it more than I thought I would!

Repulsion is only five tracks, but it moves fast and doesn’t waste time. Dead Sleep keep it stripped down – no extra layers, no pointless detours, just riffs and momentum. Feels more punk-fed than a lot of newer thrash, which helps.

“Repulsion” opens hard and pretty much sets the pace straight away. Fast, sharp, catchy without softening anything. This track is the one that stayed with me more though. That slower crawling riff in the middle sits differently from the rest of the EP and breaks up the speed in a good way.

“Hell Hath No Fury” goes for a darker mood, while “Leech From Čachtice” tears ahead with a strong speed metal spirit in its guitars and overall momentum. Both are absolute killers, with a healthy dose of spite running through them.

The lyrics caught me off guard too. There’s more going on than the usual thrash clichés – defiance, anger, women pushing back instead of just being written into the violence. Small thing maybe, but it gives the songs their own shape.

Anna Wagner holds the whole thing together. Bass and vocals both right up front, rough enough without turning messy. The whole EP sounds like three people in a room pushing everything as hard as it goes.

That’s probably why it works.

It’s rough, quick, a little nasty, and doesn’t hang around longer than it needs to. Twenty minutes and done.

Went back to the title track twice after the first run!