{"id":63021,"date":"2025-04-30T13:28:09","date_gmt":"2025-04-30T13:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/63021\/"},"modified":"2025-04-30T13:28:09","modified_gmt":"2025-04-30T13:28:09","slug":"leper-colony-those-of-the-morbid-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/63021\/","title":{"rendered":"Leper Colony – Those of the Morbid Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Have you ever played Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon? When you try to connect another actor to Kevin Bacon via the films they\u2019ve been in, winners make that connection in the fewest \u201cdegrees\u201d possible? A quick reference of the Archives convinced me Rogga Johansson may be the Kevin Bacon of the Swedish metal scene, perhaps the entire metal scene. You\u2019d be hard-pressed to argue that but not to connect many other musicians to him in six degrees or less, as Rogga contributes to forty-eight active bands and has seventeen past outfits on his resume. Rogga\u2019s longstanding relationship with German vocalist and friend Marc Grewe (Morgoth<\/strong>) culminated in the 2020 formation of Leper Colony<\/strong>, which hit the ground running with its self-titled debut<\/a> in 2023, garnering a 3.5\/5.0 rating from Crispy Hooligan<\/strong>. With Leper Colony<\/strong>\u2018s sophomore effort and first for Testimony Records, Those of the Morbid, I\u2019m primed to find out what kind of Swede-anigans Rogga\u2019s up to now. <\/p>\n

Sadly, Those of the Morbid highlights one of the most significant problems with leprosy, and that is shit starts to fall off. Which, in Leper Colony<\/strong>\u2018s case, means way more than a sophomore slump. Every limb left on the diseased body of the debut has fallen off Those of the Morbid\u2018s frame. Sure, it\u2019s still death metal, but generic in a way that defies legitimate sonic comparison. There are faint Slayer <\/strong>vibes in the harmonized guitar intro of \u201cFacing the Faceless,\u201d I guess, and far-flung hints of Bolt Thrower<\/strong> in the again harmonized leads of \u201cRealm of Madness,\u201d but even these are \u2018meh\u2019 connections. Things of the Morbid is full of tepid Rogga riffs, the HM2 more butter knife than buzzsaw, assembled into mostly punk-infused death metal compositions. Jon Rudin (Monstrous<\/strong>) lays down loads of 4\/4 straight beats and double kicks with tempo shifts and a few flourished fills thrown in for variation (\u201cThose of the Morbid Inclination\u201d). At the same time, Wombath<\/strong>\u2018s H\u00e5kan Stuvemark handles lead guitar duties, his solos adequate but uninspiring (\u201cMaster\u2019s Voice\u201d). And you have Grewe helming the mic again, his unhinged screams, shouts, and shrieks possibly the only thing keeping Those of the Morbid from falling further apart.<\/p>\n

\ufeff\ufeffThose Of The Morbid by Leper Colony<\/a><\/p>\n

Void of engaging songwriting fans expect from a Rogga project, Those of the Morbid has a cut-and-paste feel\u2014photo-shopped band image included\u2014that cling to rigid death-punk tropes and rarely color outside the lines (\u201cFlesh to Rot to Ashes\u201d). Lyrics are horror-themed and amateurish, with the especially juvenile, \u2018Suck at the teet, of the Apocalypse Whore!\u2019 one of the more egregious examples. Things of the Morbid is an album a younger, stuck-in-the-midwest me might have come across at Wal-Mart, snatching it up like some uber-extreme gem, but no. There is no questioning Leper Colony<\/strong>\u2018s pedigree, as each member has had a hand in some of death metal\u2019s more influential offerings, which makes the mediocrity of Those of the Morbid even more baffling.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a person who strives to find the good in everything, which has made covering Leper Colony<\/strong>\u2018s Those of the Morbid tough, as the tone of this review has been primarily negative. Are there no redeeming qualities within Those of the Morbid? Well, yes, actually, there are a couple. First, I dig the Felipe Mora cover art. It\u2019s what drew my eye to Leper Colony<\/strong> in the first place. Second is the album closer, \u201cA Story in Red.\u201d It\u2019s a decently executed slow-burner with melodic guitar riffs that finds Grewe channeling Lemmy Kilmister and Crowbar<\/strong>\u2018s Kirk Windstein. Taking up four minutes and fourteen seconds of Morbid\u2018s very short twenty-nine-minute runtime, though even this track suffers a bit from an anticlimactic fade-out instead of ending on a more confident note. <\/p>\n

We\u2019ve reached the end of this review together, dear reader, and I\u2019ve said all I can say about Leper Colony<\/strong> and what I think of Those of the Morbid. While I wasn\u2019t expecting the masterpiece nearly a dozen AMG writers believe is somewhere inside Rogga Johansson, I certainly wasn\u2019t expecting this. The bright side is that Rogga\u2019s forty-eight other bands have more to choose from, so I\u2019m not that put out. Playing a rousing game of Six Degrees of Rogga will be more fun than listening to Those of the Morbid, so here\u2019s some low-hanging fruit to get you all started: Glen Benton. <\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: 1.5\/5.0
DR<\/strong>: 10 | Format Reviewed<\/strong>: 320kbps mp3
Label:<\/strong> Testimony Records<\/a>
Website<\/strong>: Bandcamp <\/a>
Releases Worldwide<\/strong>: May 2nd, 2025<\/p>\n

\n\tGive in to Your Anger:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Have you ever played Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon? When you try to connect another actor to Kevin…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63022,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[32543,743,32544,12936,77,20844,32545,32546,269,6080,6082,32547,29860,32548,32549,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-63021","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-1-5","9":"tag-743","10":"tag-bolt-thrower","11":"tag-death-metal","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-german-metal","14":"tag-leper-colony","15":"tag-may25","16":"tag-music","17":"tag-review","18":"tag-reviews","19":"tag-rogga-johansson","20":"tag-slayer","21":"tag-testimony-records","22":"tag-those-of-the-morbid","23":"tag-uk","24":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}