Artist: Mortician
Country: USA
Label: Relapse Records
Formats: CD
Year: 2003
You have brute, more brutal and most brutal. And Mortician doesn’t really even fit into the latter category. Mortician is therefore a band that is hardly unknown to any metalhead; the band has achieved unprecedented cult status. The band started in 1989 under the name Casket, but soon changed its name to Mortician. The band found itself without its drummer pretty soon, and solved that by making the band’s sound even more violent than it already was with a drum computer. After several 7″ EP’s on the then brand new Relapse label, which were received tremendously well by both press and fans, the band grew to become one of the most popular acts in the death metal scene. After several full-length albums, that status has not changed. And after the somewhat disappointing ‘Domain Of Death’, here is a new album, ‘Darkest Days Of Horror’.
And the first thing that strikes me is actually the progression re-established from ‘Domain Of Death’, which really did disappoint me slightly. The songs are really songs again and not separate blastbeats with intros and other chatter. All ingredients are present again on this disc: the extremely low grunts (which, unlike those on the predecessor, are not as low after all), groovy guitar riffs, roaring bass parts (which are also less heavy and unwieldy as on the previous CD) and, of course, the intros from all kinds of horror B-movies.
The most distinctive feature where you can pick Mortician out of thousands is the nasty unwieldy, Neanderthal-like, low-budget death metal sound mixed with a dash of grindcore. Again, what makes this disc better than its predecessor are the really groovy bits that stick in your head and make it better as a whole. There are even some kind of fast high guitar runs (you can just barely call them solos) added on a song like ‘Rampage’.
About the weighty literary value of the lyrics I don’t really need to say anything, song titles like ‘Human Puzzle’, ‘Cannibalistic Fiends’, ‘Chopped To Pieces’ and ‘Taste For Blood’ say more than enough, the same goes for the artwork. In terms of improvement over the previous album, there are no changes to mention. There is, however, more variety in the songs, in a song like ‘Ghost House’ there is a very slow and cumbersome start (as we know from Necrophagia, among others) and this is finished off by an extremely fast piece. This gives the CD a somewhat more listenable identity.
All in all, a CD that will definitely not disappoint fans of Mortician, and for fans of ultra-brutal death metal in general, this is really just a must have as well. The CD can therefore be purchased without question. Again, this American duo brings you what could very well be the soundtrack to one of your bloodiest nightmares…
