He must be a music addict. I can’t fathom any other reason Rogga Johansson has so many heavy metal projects.1 Scratching his songwriting itch must require the slightly different flavors of death metal and variety of collaborators each project provides. This latest from his melodeath outfit, Dead Sun, marks, by my count, album number nine for Rogga this year alone, and it is also album number nine for Dead Sun since its formation. Rogga started Dead Sun back in 1996 as a melodic death metal outlet, but he put the project on hold after releasing an initial demo until recording the project’s first full-length LP in 2013. Since then, the band has been rather prolific, if also deeply underground. Dead Sun has never been covered here, and it doesn’t have the name recognition of Paganizer, Leper Colony, or Rogga’s eponymous one man band. Am I about to unearth a hidden gem from Rogga’s arsenal?

Picture a generic Rogga record and you’ll get a good idea of how This Life is a Grave sounds. Dead Sun leans more melodic, along the lines of Rogga Johansson or Eye of Purgatory, yet this is stripped down, bare bones, no nonsense melodeath. It has a muscular feel with pummeling blast beats and powerful, heavy guitar tones reminiscent of Bolt Thrower. Despite the bite-sized songs, each in the three-minute range, the sound is huge thanks to the big production values. Each track features a distinct melodic lead as well as Rogga’s formidable growls. Pair this with the same formula across nine songs and, unfortunately, you have a recipe for some uninspired melodeath.

This Life Is A Grave by Dead Sun

Dead Sun does nothing to mix up their sound across the record’s entire runtime, and Rogga is seemingly allergic to breaking things up with anything as simple as a quick guitar solo. On a casual listen, the songs blend into one another because there are so few standout moments to perk your ears up. One of these standouts is “Nighttime Butterfly.” It has a solid melodic riff and also the only catchy chorus on the record. It is pure Rogga poetry. He growls, “Nighttime butterfly / Your time has come to die / Nighttime butterfly / Now is not the time to ask why.” Using a butterfly as a metaphor for death is an inspired choice that should have our staff Reaper grinning ear to ear. Unless I’m misinterpreting the lyrics, and the one whose time to die is the nighttime butterfly. In which case, I do want to ask why. Joking aside, it’s a solid song and the one highlight amidst some very forgettable material.

This Life is a Grave makes for fine background listening. For those times you don’t really want to pay close attention to what’s playing in your ear pods but want something heavy and meaty blasting your eardrums, this’ll do. On occasion, the album rewards you with some decent melodies (“Embraced by the Succubus,” “Your Life is a Grave”) and energetic drum blasts courtesy of competent kit work from Thomas Ohlsson (House by the Cemetary, War Magic). The mid-tempo pace makes for good music to lift to, as songs rarely pick up or slow down the pace to throw off your rhythm. Dead Sun is consistent, if a little too consistent—it feels like Rogga’s just phoning it in. Where’s the inspiration, the creative spark that would allow the band to go off script or to at least play something that feels alive and not like it was just plugged into a formula and spit out?

It’s pretty sad that I’m ending 2025 by dishing out my lowest score of the year, and for an album that drops less than a week before Christmas no less. I can appreciate Rogga’s impulse to create, create, create because I also have that same impulse when I dive into something I enjoy. 2026 will likely see nine more Rogga projects—the man is a machine. For his sake, I hope he gets what he needs from this prolific musical output. For the sake of listeners, I hope next time he writes something more inspired than this.

Rating: 1.5/5.0
DR: 11 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Emanzipation Productions
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: December 19th, 2025

House by the Cemetary – Disturbing the Cenotaph Review

By Tyme

From Imperial Doom to The Passage of Existence, Monstrosity has one of the most solid death metal discographies on record.1 And while I’ve always gravitated toward those early Corpsegrinder albums, the performance Mike Hrubovcak turned in on The Passage of Existence was brutally good. Now, when he’s not creating sick cover art or contributing to his other projects—Azure Emote, Hypoxia, or Imperial Crystalline Entombment—Hrubovcak partners with the inimitable, no-band-too-big-or-small-for-me-to-play-in, personal injury lawyer guitarist Rogga Johannson to front House by the Cemetary. Just a year and some change off the heels of HbtC’s 2024 sophomore effort, The Mortuary Hauntings, and rounded out this time by ex-The Hate Project drummer Thomas Ohlsson, House by the Cemetary is ready to stuff your holiday stocking with their third opus, Disturbing the Cenotaph. Let’s dig in and see which of Santa’s lists House by the Cemetary ends up on.

House by the Cemetary play drop-of-water-in-a-vast-ocean OSDM, so if you’re looking for something wholly original and mindblowing, you should look elsewhere. Far removed from their HM-2 abusive Rise of the Rotten debut, Disturbing the Cenotaph forgoes the fuzz, supplying a bevy of mid-paced Rogga riffs that Hot Topic kids listening to Six Feet Under or Bone Gnawer might bang their heads to (“Island of the Dead,” “Phantom Intrusions”). Foregoing scalpels, Rogga turns in a solo-less performance that bluntly forces trauma through brute-force chugs, with the occasional wade into melodic waters (“Burial Disturbance”), imparting some level of diversity. And while Rogga handles bass duties as well, there’s not a whole lot on offer that draws my attention to that instrument’s existence on Disturbing the Cenotaph. Meanwhile, Ohlsson does a decent job of keeping everything in line with a serviceable death-metal drum performance. House by the Cemetary relies almost exclusively on tropes to survive, even its influences trodding well-worn horror paths from Fulci, to Night of the Living Dead and Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Despite House by the Cemetary’s adherence to a strict, almost Lite Brite® death metal template, there were a couple of moments on Disturbing the Cenotaph that drew my attention. One track I gladly revisited was “Massive Cadaver Resurrection,” with its very late-era Carcass vibe filled with a nice groove and some steely melodicism that spilled over into follow-up song “Undead Apocalypse,” which seemed to use the same set of notes as its predecessor but employed them at a slower, doomier pace; the track easily evoking images of a street filled with lumbering zombies. Notwithstanding these two songs, the only ones on the album that flirt around the four-minute mark as well, for what it’s worth, there’s not a lot on Disturbing the Cenotaph that elevates House by the Cemetary out of that vast ocean of also-rans.

Disturbing the Cenotaph is plagued with many of the same flaws as the last Rogga project I reviewed, Leper Colony, which also had a very paint-by-numbers approach. There are a couple of remaining factors, however, that save Disturbing the Cenotaph, albeit tenuously, from suffering a similar fate. For one, Mike Hrubovcak is a hell of a death metal vocalist, and his discernible yet deadly growls, howls, and screams go a long way toward keeping House by the Cemetary from sinking to the bottom of the death metal sea. Second, Håkan Stuvemark’s (WOMBBATH) mix is surprisingly warm and makes Disturbing the Cenotaph a pretty easy listening experience, though, comparatively speaking, “Chopsticks” is still “Chopsticks,” even if it’s mixed with a DR of 11.

There’s nothing wrong with simple. In fact, I love me some simple, knuckle-dragging death metal if, even in its simplicity, it can move me. My problem with Disturbing the Cenotaph, despite its great vocals and warm production, is that it feels lifeless and void of any real power. I’m comforted in knowing I can get a quality fix of Hrubovcak’s vocals by revisiting Monstrosity or Hypoxia, and of Rogga’s riffs, by way of Ribspreader or Paganizer. As it stands, I might throw “Massive Cadaver Resurrection” on a 2025 playlist, but beyond that, I will not be returning to Disturbing the Cenotaph beyond this review’s final period.

Rating: 2.0/5.0
DR: 11 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Pulverised Records
Website: Bandcamp
Releases Worldwide: December 12, 2025

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House By The Cemetery: Horror Movie Review - Italian Horror Movies

https://youtu.be/5ExJCaOKIcQ

#movies #horror #horrormovies #review #moviereview #themaniac #housebythecemetary #fulci