JOHANSSON & SPECKMANN — Mask of the Treacherous (review)

JOHANSSON & SPECKMANN — Mask of the Treacherous album cover Album · 2015 · Death Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
3/5 ·
UMUR
"Mask of the Treacherous" is the 2nd full-length studio album by multi-national death metal act Johansson & Speckmann. The album was released through Vic Records in February 2015. It´s the successor to "Sulphur Skies" from 2013. Johansson & Speckmann is a project act consisting of Rogga Johansson (guitar, bass), Paul Speckmann (vocals) and Brynjar Helgetun (drums). Especially the two former mentioned are quite prolific names on the scene. Rogga Johansson for his work with among others Demiurg, Paganizer, Ribspreader, The Grotesquery and Bone Gnawer and Paul Speckmann for his work with Death Strike, Abomination and especially Master.

Stylistically this is exactly what you would expect the combined forces of Johansson and Speckmann to sound like. Old school death metal featuring Speckmann´s growling vocals in front. It´s solid but seldom excellent death metal packed in a good quality sound production, performed by skilled musicians. Speckmann has become a little more unintelligble through the years and not all words come through clearly. He is a decent enough growling vocalist, but nothing out of the ordinary, and on this release his singing sounds a bit slurred. For Johansson this is just another day at the office. He can produce solid death metal riffs ´till the end of existence, but they are unfortunately seldom more than just solid and the same applies here. The pace goes from mid- to fast- to blasting, so there is a decent variation in that part of the album´s sound.

After only a few tracks the whole thing becomes a little tedious, predictable, and one-dimensional though. It´s not the type of album where you´ll be able to remember much from when it has finished playing, although it´s decent enough while it does. So upon conclusion it´s a just above average quality old school death metal release and a 3 star (60%) rating is warranted.
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