Review Summary: Forever in hell trapped in this skin. Tear it apart
Immediately unfolding with an anxious, swarming riff, Oakland’s Necrot start their sophomore LP off on the right foot. With an approach resembling old school giants like the great Chuck Schuldiner,
Mortal is stubbornly determined to sound like it came out in the early '90s. Fans of cave-dweller growls and thick guitar riffs are in luck. The album's predecessor,
Blood Offerings, had some moments of highly melodic guitar grooves, but this is simply not the case here. You’re trapped in a dungeon of sacrificial rituals – flesh piling up, decomposing – and there’s no escaping the stagnant air. Rotting corpses march to the beat of alternating fast and mid-tempo chugging, dissonant drums, and the kind of deep bellows that could only come from such a vile place.
I’m having fun with the imagery here, but you can tell Necrot did as well. One of the more relentlessly paced numbers, “Dying Life”, is ripe with vivid imagery of being skinned alive and thrown to the pack. Lead vocalist, Luca Indrio, provides a raspy yet decipherable snarl that leaves you hanging onto every word. His cavernous cries with themes hyper-focused on – uh, skin – have quite the chilling effect over each dirty guitar riff. Mortal is the kind of listen where you can’t help but stare at the album art as each meaty number unfolds. The way the album art represents exactly how the music sounds here is a bit uncanny.
Mortal is pointless to critique or analyze on a deep level since it’s all been done before. If you dig
Like an Ever Flowing Stream or Death’s earlier works – and who doesn’t, really – it feels like an honorable homage to a traditional sound. Thankfully, the effective trio do sprinkle in an unexpected moment or two. The eight-minute closing title track is nothing short of a massive heap of chunky guitars. During the last several minutes, a vibrant and urgent solo suddenly takes form – a calling for the final ritual.
Mortal won’t win any points for originality, but it doesn’t have to. There’s no doubt it can shred your face off with the best of them. So jump on in, the flesh pile’s still warm.
