Mortuous (US) 2012 demo was recently beamed into my time travelling Walkman cassette player. I instantly knew from the brootal guitar tone and super aggressive vocals that I was in for a special treat. Detuned with ultra-thick gain, the knarly slow doom part at 1:22 on Among the Lost is quite pleasing. At 3:24 an epic doom pattern emerges from the leviathan. Track 3, the Eternal Return, is more upbeat overall, and is nicely unpredictable. It still maintains a consistent heavy feel. There’s a nice groovy ride-cymbal beat at the tail-end of that tune.
Obscure Animation, track 4, changes over into a Fleshcrawl Impurity type feel, and then heavy doom again. Beams does a nice job putting his stamp on these riffs. There is a nice melodic solo, which sounds maybe doubled with a piano line.
Subjugation of Will, track 5, gets deeper into an underground feel, more like an old demo tape, but in a good way. Very aggressive blasting and bass pulses by Clint Roach. A strong riff is emboldened at the 1:40 mark, heavy like And Here I Die Satisfied. Subtle guitar solos are sprinkled throughout the recording, which are surprisingly harmonic, like at the 2:30 mark here.
The bonus track Funerealm is even more underground sounding and resembles something like Mortician crossed with Fleshcrawl.
Featuring San Jose’s hella-evil and mucho-underappreciated Mike Beams on guitar, and Chad Gailey on drums, this album slams from the very first song. You feel the blisters and sweat from the attack. These are the old school drums, clobbering you. This album’s inner cassette drips with blood and the severed limbs of those which it conquers as a testament to total human domination. The low vocals sound like they are devouring the high vocals. I give it an A. A really nice mix of heavy doom and blasting. Its like, mandatory listening or they take you out back and shoot you if not (in some small towns in far away lands). Or else they hang you from the Tree of Doom. Its available on Bandcamp, or on vinyl. This album gets you a gold metal- in hell. Go USA!