Chuck Schuldiner Project

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Mortiferous

    Its about ten o' clock, and until ten minutes ago, I was idly browsing my facebook newsfeed for anything interesting to pop up. A post from one of my friends popped up, and one of Mortiferous's band members commented something about "peeing his pants" and "Miles Davis". For whatever reason, I clicked on the kid's profile, and right in his info page, his bands logo popped appeared in his employers. The logo leaves little to the imagination, this is an unsigned, brutal death band of some sort. If some of you would just go check out the bloody band, maybe you'd see why. These guys need some support, and whether you read the "review" for them or not, I'd really like to see bands we review getting more fans on facebook. This is one of the various reasons I quote for doing this project, that is, to help garner support for underground bands who have put the effort into their music, to see that the site apparently makes such an insignificant impact is disheartening to me. Regardless, I'm going to push on with a review as always. Let's just work to make these guys top 104 likes, alright?

     One thing I really like to see a band doing is posting influences to their respective sites. Every once in a while, and obscure one will turn up that itunes hasn't recommended / I haven't found through one of the various metal forums around the internet. Aside from that, it gives you a good idea of what to anticipate listening to the band. A lot of bands will cite an influence, and obviously aren't "influenced" by the artist, but are copying ideas from the artist. I was trawling youtube late at night sometime in december and I found a series of interviews with Vincent from The Acacia Strain. The interview is not worth tracking down to post here, but on of the band's members really spoke to me with a quote that described how an "influence" is a band that inspires you to get out and make music, not a band who you take concepts and ideas from. For those of you not familiar with said band, The Acacia Strain has made a point of being the "anti-core" mathcore band. Back on topic, Mortiferous seems to be "influenced" by their influences in the sense of being inspired to go out and make music, more so than the sense of taking material from other people. I'm positive that plenty of leeching is going on here; more of Mortiferous's material is taken from Demolition Hammer and Terrorizer than any of the other cited influences, primarily focusing on a blend of grind and thrash, but old school death elements are present as well. On the converse side of things, whatever is leeched is being applied proportionately with other "leeched" elements to a typical old school swedish dm/ thrashgrind format. The staple cymbal/double bass driven drums are here in full capacity, with and almost unbroken stream of cymbals and blazing fast double bass. Most important in the sound on the five song demo set, for me, is the bass guitar. Its not always audible,  but when it is, it is on par with Atheist's bass guitar from "Piece of Time". The latter album being up there in my mental list of "death metal albums with good basswork", largely because its so audible most of the time, but also because of its intricacy and tone. 

     My personal favorite songs from the five were "Consume the Exhumed", a track with a name suspiciously similar to a Carcass song, and "Icepick Lobotomy", whose name frighteningly enough was a legitimate thing at one point in time. The first of the two songs features a prolonged, grooving bass solo that sounds like a more linear Les Claypool bass line, which in my book, counts as a moderately high accolade. The second song of the pair features some of the more flashy, "technical" riffs of the demo, which bear some similarities to sweep picking, which has its time and place, but isn't a true display of technical prowess, so take that statement with a grain of salt. 

     Now for the part of the review subject to the most blanket statements and bizarre, esoteric adjectives, recording quality. Although you get more "texture" in Mortiferous's recordings than many other home or budget recording studios may allow, it doesn't sound to carry the full weight of the guitar, and consequently, sounds a touch clinical. This has nothing to do with the music itself in this instance, and if your using a lower end audio system, you may very well have better results than I am having where "musicality" and any other audiophile or recording snob term are concerned. The bass sounds fuzzy and a bit "windy", but otherwise maintains a classic, brutal tone that sounds to be achieved through the combination of a dynamic and condenser mic. Finally, the bass drum exhibits some echo, the toms / snares can be a bit recessed and quick, lacking some depth, and the cymbals exhibit traits similar to those invoked by low bitrate compression from a 320 to a 160. 

     Overall, Mortiferous is a strong effort for a melting pot of genres that I just refer to as "old school metal". Its a concept that gets done often enough, each entry into the category original in its own, often inconspicuous way, but whenever a band can pull it off as effectively as Mortiferous, its consistently worth giving a listen, and its always a tragedy when such a band ends up dying off in the underground scene because metalcore is currently the "in thing". 

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mortiferous/230221870342149

4 comments:

  1. Hey, Jordan from Mortiferous here. Thanks for the review man, a lot of good criticism here :)

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  2. Zak Carter from mortiferous is a guitar god! And he's soooooooooo dreamy

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  3. Normally I'd say that was clearly Zak posting, but it's all true.

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  4. I love it when folks come together and share views.
    Great content, continue the good work!

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