Dig phoned up Nicke to tell him that he'd like to sign Nihilist. We told him that we've split up and we sent him the Entombed demo. Thats it! We've signed 4 LPs for Earache records, the first one is out in the beginning of June! Its called LEFT HAND PATH. It got old Nihilist songs and new Entombed songs! Check it out!
Uffe Cederlund / Entombed interview, Hypnosia #2, 1990
ENTOMBED (formerly NIHILIST) released their classic debut album Left Hand Path on this day in 1990 through Earache.
People can call us NIHILIST if they want to. We are NIHILIST! We needed a refreshment, that's why we changed the name. It feels better to call us ENTOMBED. I think NIHILIST sounds too HC to me. ENTOMBED is more like Death Metal. It means something interesting too. Well, NIHILIST also has a cool meaning but ENTOMBED is just better to us. We've had no big problems!
We are really against the right hand path and christianity. I'm not sure but I guess that the Black Bible is called the left hand path. We're not satanists, we just think that there are quite many good things about the left hand path or satanism. Well, anyway left hand path is my own path or way of life. I am my own god, master and slave. I will not worship anyone except myself. That's what I think about this! We recorded the album in 100 hours and it cost 11,000 Skr, it's not much! We didn't ask Earache how much money there was for the budget, we just recorded it and told them to pay. I'm really satisfied with it as a debut. It was the best we could do at the time.
Uffe Cederlund / Entombed interview, Isten #5, 1990
NIHILIST played with NAPALM DEATH back in '88, and that's when Dig became interested in NIHILIST, but he was very busy at the time and he didn't do on Lp with us or anything, I don't know, but then Nicke, this guy here, Mr. Nihilist himself, sent him some demos and stuff and when Dig wrote back, Nicke told him about the new band we had formed and sent him a drum demo as well. But I still think the main reason for us to get the contract with Earache was that gig back in '88.
Uffe Cederlund / Entombed interview, Isten #5, 1990
The cover artwork is by Dan Seagrave who was also creating covers for MORBID ANGEL, LAWNMOWER DETH, NOCTURNUS, CARNAGE and others around this time.
The front is - simply godly! Dan is a god! We told him and did a sketch of what we wanted, and the result was better than we had expected! I don't like the back cover, it looks bad! But I guess it's quite original, so... ha ha! It's got some old stones with teeth. Very weird. We don't like our old lyrics that much and we thought it would be bad to print only 5 lyrics in the inner sleeve. We're going to put the lyrics on the next album.
Uffe Cederlund / Entombed interview, Isten #5, 1990
"Drowned" is about raising a demon or monster, it's influenced by H.P. Lovecraft. Well, it was actually a very good friend of ours who wrote the "Drowned" lyrics as a short story. His name is Kenny, we forgot to mention that, sorry!
Uffe Cederlund / Entombed interview, Isten #5, 1990
"Bitter Loss" is about losing someone you really like, and when you start to mourn him or her, it's not really him/her you mourn for, it's yourself because you just feel like mourning yourself. The guy or girl that's dead has a great time in the coffin with the maggots, ha ha! I don't really like how the people are thinking about death anyway, it's so taboo. Death is good for some people as a release from their suffering or sickness through life. We should celebrate when someone has died.
Uffe Cederlund / Entombed interview, Isten #5, 1990
It has been great as fuck! I have not heard a bad opinion yet which is cool! We've sold around 30,000 copies now.
Entombed interview, Blasphemous #1, 1991