Album review: Revolting “The Shadow at the World’s End”
Rogga Johansson is back with yet another Swedish death metal release – this time with Revolting’s seventh full-length album.
Rogga Johansson is a contemporary underground death metal legend. He is a busy and very creative artist with multiple bands and projects going on at the same time. You may know him from Paganizer, Massacre, Megascavenger, Bloodgut, Furnace, Ghoulhouse, Dead Sun, God Cries, Putrevore, Down Among the Dead Men, Grisly, Lobotomy Dept, Humanity Delete, Johansson & Speckmann, Those Who Bring The Torture, Echelon, Eye of Purgatory, Eaten, Monstrous, Bone Gnawer, PermaDeath, Pile of Skulls, Reek, Ribspreader, Severed Limbs, Stass, Svitjod, The Dead Cold, The Skeletal, To Descend, Banished From Inferno, Skeletal Spectre, Carve, Demiurg, The Grotesquery, Soulburn, Sinners Burn, Foreboding, Terminal Grip, The 11th Hour, Graveyard After Graveyard, Deranged, Minotaur Head…or some other band or just know him as a solo artist. This man’s treasure trove of output is vast. Revolting, which was founded in 2008, returns today with its seventh full-length studio album, “The Shadow at the World’s End”. As an artist, Rogga is a multi-instrumentalist and vocalist. In Revolting he focuses on lead vocals and playing the guitar and is backed up by a drummer and a bassist. This is an album that fits nicely in with the best of Sweden’s proud tradition of death metal bands. This is uncompromising music. It is gloriously terrific for those of us who appreciate raw, stenchy and brutal basement music. Rogga, born in 1976, came onto the scene in the late 1990s, but in his music, we can certainly hear echoes of early 1990s Swedish bands such as Entombed, Dismember and Unleashed. Rogga pays respect to those who have walked before him in the old-school Swedish death metal forests, but without being a copycat. With his vast volume of output, he has found his own sound and style, most of it built upon the firm foundation of old-school Swedish death metal. “The Shadow at the World’s End” is a solid quality album. It has no fillers and could easily be performed live in its entirety. Personal highlights for me include the punishing title track as well as “1888”, “Daggers That Mimic Life’s Pain”, “Carnage Will Come” and “Sorrow As Companion”. The sun doesn’t shine where this music comes from. Dark, cold and damp is the basement where Rogga Johansson creates his music. Rogga delivers once again.
Revolting’s album “The Shadow at the World’s End” is out today via Transcending Obscurity Records.
