Rogga Johansson must practically eat, sleep, and drink old school Swedish death metal. Between all of his bands and projects, he practically is 1990s Stockholm incarnate. Paganizer is one of his more prolific and longest-standing bands and Cadaver Casket was originally issued as a mini-CD for subscribers of Close-Up Magazine.
There is nothing on Cadaver Casket that is looking to up the ante of the death metal scene. This is straight-up Entombed, Dismember, and Grave worship and little more. For what its worth, everything is played with the utmost precision and feeling of the early Stockholm scene (again, this is a Rogga project we are talking about) but that’s ultimately the problem with a release such as this. There are so many other bands out there right now capitalizing on the retro-death metal (particularly of the Stockholm variety), that without some sort of a standout element, there’s just no reason to justify one release over the next. One could praise the perfectly executed buzzsaw tone, the punchy riffs of “Deranged World,” and the subtle melodies of “Rot,” but the bottom line is that it could be copy/pasted onto 15 other band’s releases in the next few months with little else to mention.
If you also eat Swedish death metal for breakfast or are a huge Rogga fan, there’s no reason for you not to give Cadaver Casket a shot. Chances are you’ll love it as much as the next iteration to come out in a few weeks. For the rest of us, there’s little here that you haven’t heard countless times in the last few months (let alone years).