Origin:	Sweden
Genres:
DISBANDED

Last update/review:	June 27, 2015

The Great Deceiver

Tomas Lindberg is still revered for his time spent in the seminal Swedish death metal band At The Gates, and since that band's initial demise he has shown up in a variety of groups, mostly tied to death metal either directly or indirectly. The Great Deceiver was not a death metal band, and thus was kind of the black sheep of the Lindberg family of bands. The style on A Venom Well Received was a bit hard to pinpoint, as it featured mid-paced songs, with driving, harsh guitar riffs accentuated by a spacey, phased guitar sound, which is a nice effect though it borders on overuse here. Surprisingly, the genre that The Great Deceiver might have been closest to is nu-metal -- they were not a nu-metal band, but had some nu-metal characteristics, and with a different vocalist (one of those half-crooning, half-hardcore-shouting types that most nu-metal bands employ) the similarities would have been more noticeable. Lindberg turned in a typical performance, though for some reason he sounded less dynamic than usual, his trademark hoarse yells having less range than the music might dictate. Kudos to these guys for doing something a bit different, though it's hard to tell who the target audience was for this band.