And the retro Swedish death metal hits keep coming with a second wave of bands like Malfeitor, Mass Burial, Corrosive Carcass, Unconsecrated, Bombs of Hades, Eroded and such continuing the quality laid down by bands like Entrails, Demonical, Bloodbath, Fatalist, Hail of Bullets and others. And while some may tire of the genre’s imminent saturation, I can’t get enough of it and with their second album and follow up to their tasty 2011 EP, Bestial, Sweden’s Blood Mortized have delivered another quality album in the genre.

Of course, sharing members with Malfeitor as well as former members of Amon Amarth and Crypt of Kerberos helps the band’s legitimacy, but what carries Blood Mortized is their sense of place within the genre. They aren’t reinventing it, nor completely calling it in with a lazy homage. They have a sense of nostalgia without forcing it and an energy that invigorates the potentially tired corpse of the genre.

The usual suspects are the primary influence as Grave,  Entombed, Dismember and Unleashed come together in Blood Mortized’s sound and guitar tone, but there’s never a sense they they are ripping any of them off. The guitar tone of course has that buzz saw tone, but its not overdone or forced, having a more rough, raw sound, but still ‘that sound’.  The songs vary from a crunchy, classic d-beat canters (“The Heretic Possession”, “To Murder a God”), burly double bass trundles (“Doomsday Architect” ) menacing, doom riddled numbers (“Only Blood Can Tell”, “Bringer of Eternal Death”) and a few all all raging moments littered amid both (“Dead & Rotten”, “To Murder a God”, personal favorite, “The Key to a Black Heart”). All of it convincing and enjoyable and par for the genre’s course in tone and presentation.

On the down side, I’m not utterly blown away as say the Entrails or Binah releases as the tracks seem to be a bit restrained, two of the tracks the 6+ minute slow burner “Rekviem” and “Shadow of the Quarter Sun” from the Bestial EP re-appear here and the ‘Lemmy coming back from the grave’ artwork was a but silly. But those are my superficial nit pickings on an otherwise excellent addition to the genre from Dark Dark Descent Germany, I mean FDA Rekotz.

[Visit the band's website]

---

Comments