Leper Colony, a new supergroup comprised of members of underground cult death metal bands Morgoth, Paganizer and Consumption, have released their self-titled debut album and the results are exactly what you’d expect: crushing old-school death metal.
Most Death inspired bands tend to draw more influence from the later catalogue with albums like Spiritual Healing and Individual Thought Patterns, which are incredibly important albums to the scene but tend to overshadow Leprosy and Scream Bloody Gore. Leper Colony are here to correct that as their debut album is dripping with blood-drenched tributes to both of those albums.
Leper Colony is far from an innovative and unique album but not every album has to reinvent the wheel, sometimes a record just has to meet expectations and give the listener what they expect. Leper Colony is very much a throwback album that has an old-school 90s death metal sensibility that avoids feeling dated.
Leper Colony sonically draws from many other old-school death metal bands including Obituary at times, particularly in the vocals from Marc Grewe who delivers a performance that feels reserved at times but can deliver some absolutely devastating guttural vocals on tracks like ‘Perdition’s End’. The slower doomy songs give the album more variety and add an Obituary style that mixes quite well with the Death style harmonised guitars and caveman vocals.
The middle section of the album is where some of the best material lies, the title track is worthy of Death themselves with its use of dissonant clean guitars and progressive sharp turns and the album continues with ‘A Flow So Greatly Macabre’ before returning to slamming caveman riffs with the ripping guitar solo work of Rogga Johansen on ‘Flesh Crawling Demise’.
Leper Colony is yet another project from Rogga Johansen, a man known for having an incredible amount of side projects, and this has the potential to grow into something interesting much like Death themselves did back in the late 80s. With any luck, there will be more to come from Leper Colony but it’s an inevitable fact that Rogga will release more music perhaps sooner than we think.
Leper Colony is out on January 13th via Transcending Obscurity Records
