Navigating You Through the Progressive Underground

Style: Blackened Tech-Death (Harsh vocals)
Review by: Chris
Country: US
Release date: 16-09-2020

Hell yeah.

That is my intro to this album. I really cannot find pretty much anything about this band ( it doesn’t help you share a name with Mortician) but man this rips. I really can’t remember the last thing pitched as Blackened Tech-Death that really met the criteria of that combination or really excited me, but this has definitely done so. Just hit play right now, this album immediately just turns it to 120 and starts smacking you around. The first track “Kingdom of Shadows” spends the first couple minutes rolling around in a tech-y filth before the last minute really introduces the more blackened elements with more drawn out chord creations and guitar voicings. Other standouts for me included “Cry” which had some really nice higher dissonant guitar work over the breakdowns, and “Ruined Temple” which I felt had a nice flirtation with melody in the solo before devolving itself back down to the riffing filth.

The blackened pieces definitely show up more in the chord and tremolo focused moments, while the riff sections firmly lay themselves in the heavy tech death area. I wouldn’t say anything about the vocals necessarily scream blackened to me, tending to be much more in the death and deathcore styles between the low gutturals and the higher textured screams. The drums do at times devolve a bit into black metal style blasts, though only mainly when the guitars are also riding that vein as well. Other than that they are generally standard fair for the genre but have a few interesting moments. My main drawbacks are the single note focused breakdowns, which I thought felt a little flat compared to all the riffing moments in other parts of the album.

This is the kind of album that just sort of rips out your throat, shows it to you, and says “see isn’t this gnarly as hell?”. And sometimes that’s just what I want. Not necessarily the most game changing album ever, but for a band I literally can not find ANYTHING about, this rips.


Recommended tracks: Kingdom of shadows, Cry, Deicide, Ruied Temple
Recommended for fans of: Fleshmeadow, Hath
Final verdict: 7.5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Youtube

Label: Independent

mortician is:
– Jason Agnor (guitars, vocals)
– Zack Sober (drums)
– Paul Landi (bass guitar)


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