Review: Moral Collapse – Divine Prosthetics

Style: technical death metal, brutal death metal, experimental ambient (harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Nile, Obscura
Review by: Andy
Country: India
Release date: 2 June, 2023

Indian band Moral Collapse’s debut record earlier this decade convincingly blended technical death metal flourish with a brutal catchiness not unlike Nile or Hideous Divinity. On Divine Prosthetics this time around, Arun Natarajan (guitar, bass, vocals) wants to push himself closer to my forte, the avant-garde, by incorporating dark ambient/electronica driven tracks. I am all for more experimentation in metal–it’s kinda what I’m drawn toward–but why do there need to be so many extended ambient passages in Divine Prosthetics? 

The album starts with one, has another after only two more tracks, and then finishes with the longest one, rendering about half the album as of little interest to your typical metal fan. Luckily, I can get behind dark ambient and weird, glitchy electronic beats like on “Disintegration” or the steady, occasionally distorted pulse of “NORDescendant,” but they’re as lengthy as can be and don’t feel particularly attached to the surrounding death metal. Man, if any of these detached tracks could simply have a nice transition into the next, maybe I’d be more enthused. As it stands, they should be a separate EP or a separate band completely. My tolerance is unusually high for such daft and excessive experiments, but the bloat and style exceeds my threshold for such a style… we haven’t even discussed “Divine Prosthetics II” yet, but we’ll get there.

So I’ve complained a lot about the new aspects of Moral Collapse’s sound, but damn their death metal is still tight as hell. With peaks like “Your Stillborn Be Praised” on the debut, the band clearly have a complete mastery of the style. That continues. “Precise Incision” kicks off the death metal part of the album with surgical precision (seemed too obvious to pass up with that title), the gargantuan drumming performance of Hannes Grossmann challenging the melodic instruments to rise up and match it. Every riff and solo on the album is as tight and stank-face inducing as a crawl space flooded with sewage. “Calamitous” stealthily increases the groove from “Precise Incision” without sacrificing any of the lovely staccato blasts or bass solos–and yeah, the production has a lovely, substantial low-end in which the bass audibly plods along. For more bass highlights, listen to the end of “Divine Prosthetics”–Natarajan goes off. 

After the sweet climax of “Divine Prosthetics,” however, Moral Collapse decide to launch into a ten minute ambient piece. “Divine Prosthetics II” complicates the sound with some free improv jazziness featuring Julius Gabriel on saxophone and Mia Zabelka on a very quiet violin, but even the wonderful world of free jazz can’t cover that Moral Collapse aren’t ambient musicians, and the final product sounds amateurish, though interesting because hearing Hannes Grossmann jazzily improvise like Kenny Grohowski (Imperial Triumphant) is awesome. 

As much as I’d have loved to dote on Moral Collapse because of how awesome their debut was, it’s impossible to ignore that half of this album really isn’t that great. Sloppy ambience and jagged, but ultimately weak, electronica genuinely feel out of place on a brutal tech death album. While I hope Natarajan continues trying his hand at new ideas and techniques rather than falling into a pit of repetitious releases–I truly do applaud his efforts here to expand the sound–I think considering a different angle or more practice at this one is necessary. Finally, I hope Natarajan continues collaborating with Grossmann because he brings out some of Grossmann’s best work ever, and that’s a seriously impressive claim considering Grossmann’s legendary catalog. All in all, though, Divine Prosthetics expands in the wrong ways, but at least the tech death tracks are great!

Recommended tracks: Precise Incision, Calamitous, Divine Prosthetics
You may also like: Hanness Grossmann, Hideous Divinity, Alustrium, Labyrinth of Stars, De Profundis
Final verdict: 5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives Page

Label: Subcontinental Records – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Moral Collapse is:
– Sudarshan Mankad (guitars)
– Arun Natarajan (guitars, bass, vocals)
– Hannes Grossmann (drums)