Ready for another feast of brutal old school Swedish death metal, the way it was meant to be. You know, like it was before the melodic oh so beautiful death metal scene, got out of hand in the mid nineties. This horde is lead by Rogga Johansson, also known from his other band Ribspreader and his work with Edge Of Sanity.

As written this is old school death metal, sounding as it did in the beginning of the nineties. Heavy groovy guitarriffs, at the same time very catchy and grim sounding. A noisy bass is hiding just below the guitars, it is noisy and gets beaten a lot. And is great together with the very distorted guitar. The drums are pounding, doublebass assault after doublebass assault, while the snare drum and various cymbals are screaming in pain. The beat is delivered in a great midtempo pace most of the time, not to slow and not to fast.

The compositions are great, this is how well written death metal should sound. Even though Paganizer is using utterly old and before used elements, do they make this record and the music sound fresh. The guitarriffs are good, and there are some great leads involved. The pace shifts are good and the vocals from Rogga is over the top. He is one of my favourite growlers, there is no doubt about that.

The production is pretty good and very suiting for this kinda assault. The album is recorded together with Nasum mainman Mieszko Talarczyk and Dan Swanö has mastered the album. Both are great at their work and have made the album sound great. A heavy pummelling sound, which punish the listener’s neck, very raw and direct.

If you’re into old school death metal, you already know Paganizer and their music. This will for sure not disappoint you in any way, this is freaking good. Great tunes, with great vocals and a lot of ugliness. But what if you had to choose between Paganizer and Ribspreader, well yeah, I’d go for both. But this is more raw and ugly than Ribspreader, and a bit more uptempo. But both bands slay, each band has their time.

[This review was first published on the now defunct scandinavianmetal.info webzine]