Paganizer / Skinned Alive - Bred by Demons / Human Landfill

PAGANIZER / SKINNED ALIVE - Bred by Demons / Human Landfill (BRUTAL ART Records 7"EP 2016)

And one more Paganizer release, this time it’s a split 7”EP with Skinned Alive, who also came up recently with another very nice split CD with Fleshcrawl. This was a monster release, so I am happy that I can hear Skinned Alive yet again. And on a joined release with beasts from Paganizer – that will be a good start of the day for me haha!

I started with side A and Paganizer. There are another two songs from this band and well, I wonder when were these two songs written and recorded – before or after “The Portal” EP. Why? Because stylistically these two songs are quite different than “The Portal” songs. They lack the melodic side of “The Portal” and that blasting death metal, which I liked a lot. Meanwhile both “Bred by Demons” and “The Hammerhead” sound more in the vein of Grave or Vomitory, with that groovy, heavy and nasty mid paced Swedish death metal, that has almost a punkish simplicity and is characterized with total straight forward attitude, aggression and that it forces headbanging right from the first riff. Simple, vicious death metal as such was something that characterized Paganizer ever since their second full length album, so I am not surprised to hear this style again. And obviously I like these two tracks a lot, even though I have to say that “The Portal” EP was a little bit better, more interesting and powerful. Anyway, it’s another very good dose of death metal from Paganizer.

Skinned Alive does exactly what their name say – they slowly bring torture and skin you alive with great mutilating death metal, played in the traditional, old school way. Ferli Thielmann, who was a sole member of Skinned Alive at the time of recording this EP (and who’s also in Demonbreed and Museo), came up with some good stuff here. But I have to say that I am not so much impressed with the sound quality of these songs. The drum machine sound is quite irritating (not terrible though) and the overall production lacks the powerful vibe. I have to say also the tracks from his Fleshcrawl split were better (“Lingchi” for example!). But this is solid stuff anyway, I enjoyed his music again and I just cannot wait to hear more. I expected something better from these two songs, but I cannot also say that I’m very disappointed. Skinned Alive delivered just solid, standard death metal slabs.

Final rate: 70/100