.png)
PAGANIZER – AS MANKIND ROTS
.jpg)
Available now via XTREEM MUSIC - Evolution has always been optional in death metal, and Paganizer offer a reminder that longevity doesn’t require reinvention. Twenty-seven years on, with thirteen full-length albums behind them, Swedish death metal here feels less like a preserved style and more like a working discipline - one still capable of producing records that hold together with confidence and purpose.
.jpg)
While I’m more familiar with the Gothenburg melodic death metal lineage, As Mankind Rots provides a clear entry point into the Stockholm strain - not by easing the listener in, but by setting its terms immediately.
Early on, “Devoured” sets a strong template, swinging between bursts of speed and heavier mid-tempo passages. Blast beats give way to grounded riffing, capturing Paganizer at their most direct and effective.
The production is thick, the performances assured, but the band’s core approach hasn’t shifted. Paganizer establish a riff or rhythmic idea, commit to it rather than developing it melodically, and let tension stack up through duration and insistence. The atmosphere presses down rather than reaching outward, favouring pressure over spectacle. Guitars sit heavy and drag forward, vocals push slightly ahead in the mix, drums drive the songs without pulling focus. Everything locks together, with little interest in flash or excess.
Vocally, the performance lands cleanly throughout - forceful, steady, and direct. Rogga Johansson’s classic mid-to-low death growl locks into the riffs without competing with them, helping maintain the album’s sense of collective motion. Embedded. Purposeful. Effective.
“A Testament to Madness”, the album’s seventh track, drops the pace through a pronounced half-time feel, giving the record room to breathe and settle before kicking back into faster, more aggressive ground. It doesn’t stand out so much as it resets the listener, reinforcing the album’s sense of control and flow.
“One Way to the Grave” feints with a brief false ending before surging back in a final burst of blasts and guitars, helping it feel like the album’s natural point of closure. The decision to follow it with a re-recorded “Vanans Makt” is more divisive. Featuring guest vocals from Bulten of Lastkaj 14, the mix lifts the vocal well above the guitars, with the drums pulled back and stripped of urgency compared to elsewhere on the record. The song stands up on its own, but the album had already closed its argument. Paganizer don’t come across as innovators, and As Mankind Rots isn’t chasing extremity. What it offers instead is durability - a band working comfortably inside a form they know intimately.
In a genre often measured by excess or novelty, there’s something formidable about seeing a band stick to their ideas without flinching - musically, structurally, and over decades.
SCORE 8/10
WORDS BY Ryan Lind