GRISLY
Tomb King
(Vic Records)
30:06min

If the count on Metal Archives is correct, then Rogga Johansson currently has well over 40 bands going. And to be honest, if I had known that the Death Metal Metal jack-of-all-trades was involved in this album, I would not have reviewed it. Because, from my point of view, he often, too often, only delivers mediocre Death Metal. Music not too bad, but far away from any memorability. There is a thin line between nice and annoying. And very often I can not really figure out how much influence he has on the music itself, whether it is a real band, a project or he just adds some guitar tunes. Same goes for GRISLY, founded back in 2014 and with two previous released albums. Information is both given that GRISLY is “is Rogga Johansson’s brainchild”, otherwise it is presented as ” GRISLY feat. Rogga Johansson”, which sounds more like a guest appearance. And the fact that I have already written quite a bit without saying a word about the music shows me that Rogga Johansson is not necessarily doing himself any favors with his many projects. So now to the third album of the Swedes and the brief resume: too short! The nine songs are a deep bow to Swedish Death Metal, especially AT THE GATES, DISMEMBER and the early EDGE OF SANITY came to my mind. The whole thing is presented in the typical sound, short and crisp. There is little to criticize, except for a certain repetition, the two consecutive songs ‘Hours Of Torment’ and ‘The Key To Algernon’ sound pretty similar. Well, a certain redundancy is an inherent stylistic element of melodic Death Metal, but a bit too exaggerated at this point. “Tomb King” is definitely too short, because the song ‘Souls Last Cares II’ is a total failure, more like a kind of interlude, but for almost four minutes. At the end of the day, what remains is a pleasant, albeit too short, trip to the early / mid 1990s. For more information please visit www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063485232579

Mirco Szymyslik

Mirco Szymyslik

Leave a Reply