I’ve mentioned before (and will again – us writers, like bands, have our favoured phrases we come back to, like the metaphoric pooch returning to its gut-chunks), but predictability is underrated. And a bloody good thing, too, at times, because back for the fifth time of asking, and spilling their fetid guts for the baying hordes in time honoured Sunlight styled fashion, is Sweden’s Entrails with World Inferno (Metal Blade).

If you’re new to the Entrails world – and the logo, hometown, and, well, a million other clues doesn’t give it away – you’re in for a dirty treat of Entombed, Dismember and Unleashed styled deathly metals. Though don’t assume this to be a tribute act; Jimmy Lundquist is enjoying the fruits of labours that began in 1990, and then sat decomposing on a shelf until being exhumed and the project resurrected through carnage in 2008. This time around, though, the bowels of the beast have been updated with a new line-up, including Visceral Bleeding vocalist Tommy Carlsson whose throaty gargle sits nicely atop a tableau of scuzzy HM2 riffage that pounds happily away.

As fusty riff after decrepit riff is unveiled, at a colonic level Entrails deal in a very enjoyable splatter of Death Metal that, considering Entombed A.D.’s struggles to produce an album worthy of legacy, plugs a hole very nicely. ‘Serial Murder (Death Squad)’ adds splashes of melody, ‘Dead and Buried’ grinds a mid-tempo head-banging furrow, and album highlight ‘Insane Slaughter’ ups the ante in pace, racing in after a brief interlude/introductory piece before hitting an infectious chug.

At no point during its (slightly too long) forty-five-minute duration do Entrails pretend, nor wish, to be anything other than a rotting intestine wrapping itself around your brain, oozing reverential Stockholmian Death Metal into your gray matter. And, when it’s as enjoyable as this, more power to them.

7.0/10

STEVE TOVEY