Revolting - Hymns of Ghastly Horror (2012)

   It's one thing that Rogga Johansson played and still playing in lots of bands, and his inspiration and productiveness seems inexhaustible, but the same could be said about several of his bands too. And despite its quite basic horror addicted old school death metal concept, Revolting is one of them. 
   "Hymns of Ghastly Horror" became even exceptional compared to the previous Revolting albums, because instead of the most usual features of Swedish death metal, it took the second most usual path of the style, a more melodic and vintage style. This simpler, more thrash and heavy metal influenced direction is quite common among Swedish bands, and if it's about Mr. Johansson's previous works, this intense and nearly party compatible style wears plenty of similarities with the first Paganizer record. Not so '80s oriented, less mixed, and evidently old school death metal, but it's closer to death'n'roll than any basically groove death metal that's marked as death'n'roll for some unknown reason. The guitar themes and sound are quite similar to Slasher Dave's style (Acid Witch, Horrific), that has the interesting feature of being able to turn the darkest topics somehow unusually energetic and to give them some brighter, entertaining tone. The same energy could be sensed in "Hymns of Ghastly Horror", and it's not completely clear if the whole thing was intentional, or just the accidental result of turning old school death more vintage sounding and heavy metal influenced. The whole thing could have ended up as something pretty close to melodic death, and it would have been logical, but it's something else. Something definitely underrated and unnoticed by most, that could serve even as an alternate guide to determine the basics and features of lesser known and yet quite tiny subgenre. An impressively interesting and entertaining album for sure!