Review Summary: An infectious-tasty display of old school death metal.
Morgoth is a German death metal band formed in 1987. After releasing 1 solid demo and two ep’s they set out for their first lp and succeeded with flying colors. Drawing from their past efforts
Cursed was born in 1991.
Cursed is a rather interesting album as it contains elements of straight death metal, doom metal with sparing synths, and a slight theatrical feel; which may attribute to the bands notable love for the movie Lord of the Rings. Now don’t get it twisted, you won’t find anything cheesy here, we’re still talking about straight up death metal with Obituary-like vocals and tasty tremolos surrounding a dense productive atmosphere. It’s worthy to note that
Cursed favors the more mid-paced style of death metal rather than the overly high paced aggressive style. This album is more dark and creepy than it is aggressive; however, that’s not to say that aggressive moments don’t exist such as the transition of doom to aggressive death on “Isolated”.
Listeners will find it interesting to note that the first track “Body Count”, which is a mid-paced death metal track filled with low registered tremolos and tasty double bass, is superseded by two tracks which are the complete opposite. The two following tracks are symphonic drone ambience and doom instrumental metal backed up by synths. Some may find this spaced out section to be burdensome to
Cursed’s credibility. However, some may enjoy the fact that Morgoth are about doing what they want, whether it takes away from the albums flow or not. I still to this day have mixed thoughts about it.
“Exit to Temptation” is without a doubt a standout track and really shows what Morgoth can do. The vocals of Marc Grewe, which are, as mentioned above, eerily similar to John Tardy, really shine here. He has the mid-paced type of growl which can both go lower in register and well as high and Marc usually tends to go high. High to the point that he actually is quite reminiscent of Chuck Schuldiner of Death. The guitars are really tasty too but it’s important to understand that the guitars don’t display much technical ability as they really don’t need to. They already fit the music perfectly. Each riff is backed up by the perfect drum pattern such as when this track jumps from blast beats to mid-paced double bass drumming with a slow-sparing snare hit. I usually like to think of this album as the model for perfect old school death metal. It just has the feel which is hard to describe. The music feels so right and tracks like “Sold Baptism” and “Suffer Life” have some of the tastiest atmospheres. This is a worthy and almost essential old-school death metal worth owning or at least listening to.
