Review Summary: As good as it gets.
Whatever one may say about death metal, early nineties or not, is that a hell of a lot it is derivative and clichéd. Regardless of the quality of many of these bands, most still rely on the same conventions that have plagued the genre for twenty years now. Enter the Bremen Scene, a little German punk that came to prominence with a band called Acme who fused both death metal and hardcore in a way unlike any other. It’s hard to think that what was just four kids playing for fun would spark one of the most creative metalcore scenes of them all. Bands like Systral, Stack, Metoke, Carol, Ambush and many others fused death metal, hardcore and a huge mountain of influences in both new and incredibly exciting ways. Arguably though the finest hour came with Morser’s sophomore effort;
10,000 Bad Guys Dead.
On
Two Hours To Doom, Morser had established a deathgrind sound in the vein of siblings Yacopsae but mixed with more traditional elements of hardcore and death metal.
10,000 Bad Guys Dead however took those elements and expanded upon them in every way possible. On this album the song structure have been lengthened with a far more traditional death metal/death n’roll feel while not losing the hardcore breakdowns. On paper it does seem like an interesting if rather generic mix that could lose the intensity of the previous outing. Fortunately
10,000 Bad Guys Dead loses none of its predecessor’s intensity, indeed it actually ramps it up to new heights. Songs like ‘A.M.P.’ and ‘The Aim And The Method’ show how the increased emphasis on melody and harmony have ratcheted the intensity up a notch or three. The songs flow from riff to riff with very few, if any, hiccups at all while still maintaining the hard-edged aggression and the harmonies between the guitarist and the two bass players have now become a vital lynchpin to the band’s sound due to the mixing pushing the basses forward in the sound, adding a monstrous heaviness that the previous album lacked. Not only that but the efforts of the drummer are perhaps just as vital in making this release as good as it is. His influences are clearly in the vein of Dave Lombardo and John Stanier but he uses these influences to maximum effect, attacking the skins with both creativity and sheer aggression, pushing the album onwards even when it occasionally lags. These strengths dominate most of the album with only one or two lags in intensity.
10,000 Bad Guys Dead is ugly, brutal and utterly relentless, a near-classic, death metal release that raises the bar for both originality and intensity, one that very few have matched today.
