We all know Jonny Pettersson (or Rogga Johanssen 2.0, as I like to call him) from his current and former work in multiple bands, including the now-defunct Henry Kane, Wombbath, Rotpit, Heads for the Dead, Gods Forsaken, Massacre, and others. While he is more known for Swedish-styled death metal projects, he has branched out (as heard on the last Henry Kane album), but I wasn’t ready for this one.

Teaming up with fellow Heads for the Dead member (Jon Rudin) on drums, Human Harvest is a project that has more in common with the likes of Incantation, Pneuma Hagion, Nightmarer, Corpsessed and such, being a discordant, dissonant, lurching cavernous style of Dark Descent Death metal, as I call it.

This is his third album under this moniker, all on a Mexican record label. However, my first exposure is 30 minutes of lurching, oozing, atonal death metal with little respite—nothing catchy, groovy, or classically Swedish-sounding. In listening to some of the prior material, there was a bit of a Swedish buzz used in the guitars and some more classic Swedish death metal riffs. Those have been obliterated this is just thick, nauseous blasts of malice and disgust. .

The title track starts things off and, the boot is rarely let off of your throat, with 8 songs of pure filth as the likes of “The Dirge”, “Blackened Skies”, “Chasms of Anguish” and “A Force to Obliterate”, blast, ooze, and lope by with aplomb. There are some slower, sickly parts littering the tracks (i.e . “Darkness Crawls”) as is the norm with this style of death metal, but don’t come here looking for some classic, catchy HM2 canters or gallops.

Highly recommended for anyone who likes the bands I mentioned above and wants to hear Petersson’s more brutal side.

[Visit the band's website]

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