ALBUM REVIEW: Beyond The Macabre – Paganizer

If flux capacitors were real, someone may well want to go back in time and stop ENTOMBED from putting the HM-2 pedal on the map. Since its early 90s glory days, more bands than hands can count have copied the buzzsaw brilliance of DISMEMBER and GRAVE. On their twelfth album, Beyond The Macabre, PAGANIZER once again tread the left hand path, pillaging the village of death metal deities to deliver another paint-by-numbers collection. Whilst its tributes to the heavenly HM-2 go hand-in-hand with deafening double bass drum beats, this wholly unoriginal set is infectiously indulgent – despite its indifference, you’re drawn to it over and over, feeding off of its flesh.

Whereas 2019’s The Tower Of Morbid felt like a journey through fields of rotting flesh, Beyond The Macabre feels like swimming in quicksand. Just like the substance does, PAGANIZER suck you into its mass by blurring everything into one; the double-whammy of Meatpacker and Sleepwalker sound like the same song, drowning you in double bass drums like devil’s snare suffocating you in the dungeons, a distorted wall of sound slapping you in the face until you’re blue.

Beyond The Macabre is a tale of two halves. Its first half is death metal for dummies, with buzzsaw tones and double-bass nailing you like Jesus to the cross; you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it twice, you’ve heard it a thousand times and yet it doesn’t get any less enjoyable. However, the record’s second half stretches PAGANIZER’s skin, cannibalising their old-school roots with progressive, sludgy death-doom and melodeath influences that make for captivating listening. 

Raving Rhymes To Rot lulls you into a false sense of security as its downtuned, distorted riffs bleed into a solo so epic in proportion ARCH ENEMY might ask for it back. It’s the kind of song that soundtracks a grand quest through the bowels of rotting flesh, much like the kind they hinted at on The Tower Of Morbid. Elsewhere on the Karl Willetts (BOLT THROWER/MEMORIAM) featuring Unpeaceful End, they spend six minutes conjuring demons from the depths of hell in a death-doom sludge fest full of peaks and troughs. 

Whilst PAGANIZER play two-to-three-minute death metal with a mastery many bands long for, it’s those moments where they throw away the rulebook in which they really come to life. With the exception of Menschenfesser’s two-minute death metal disco, no track on the second half drops below four minutes of madness and it’s all the better for it as PAGANIZER flesh out their ideas fully and create something more unique. 

For all of its unoriginality at times, it’s hard not to down your pint, raise your horns high in the air and bang your head in happiness as their death metal delivers all the fun of the fare. When vocalist Rogga Johansson gutturally growls “you are what you devour”, you can’t help but scream along.

Whilst there’s always cause to chastise bands who cut themselves too close to the cloth of predecessors, PAGANIZER earn the right to be the exception to the rule. Beyond The Macabre, like Land Of Weeping Souls and The Tower Of Morbid before it, proves that no matter how original or unoriginal your death metal is, if you can do it well, it well and truly slaps.

Rating: 8/10

Beyond The Macabre is set for release on June 24th via Transcending Obscurity Records.

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