Mortician: Chainsaw Dismemberment

I'm confident that some readers already know this album pretty well; after all, it came out way back in 1999 and, for some people anyway, may even be a classic of some sort. I won't go that far. I like the intersection of horror movies and heavy metal found here, but I have to say that the music is mostly just a pounding on the same themes and musical ideas over and over again. To be fair, these guys aren't trying to be anything other than brutal and intense, a band committed to fighting against traditional notions of melody and music. The result is a detuned and guttural exploration of unrelenting and aggressive sound. Clocking in at about 50 minutes, it all gets to be too much after about 10-15 minutes. I liked a few of the songs, especially those that sampled from famous (and infamous) horror movies. Interested readers should definitely check out the Wikipedia page for this album if they want to know what songs go with what movies. Even better, make a game out of it by guessing where the clips come from.

Collectors may want to grab this one because it is now available on vinyl (as a double-LP). It also contains a poster of the gruesome cover art, an image of a chainsaw killer looking back at some of his recent victims. It's not a very nice image, but it goes along perfectly with the horror metal theme on display here.

I wanted to like the music here a little more than I did. The guys claim to be the heaviest band in the universe. For all I know, that could be true, but they don't seem to have anywhere else to go than where they've gone. I don't mind the low guitars and the pounding drums, but the vocals here are way too low, unnecessarily swallowed up by the surrounding barrage of sound.

Track Listing:
1. Stab
2. Fleshripper
3. Drowned in Your Own Blood
4. Mass Mutilation
5. Mauled Beyond Recognition
6. Rabid
7. Bloodshed
8. Decayed
9. Final Bloodbath
10. Island of the Dead
11. Brutalized
12. Slaughtered
13. The Crazies
14. Silent Night, Bloody Night
15. Chainsaw Dismemberment
16. Psychotic Rage
17. Funeral Feast
18. Wolfen
19. Dark Sanity
20. Camp Blood
21. Tormented
22. Slaughterhouse (Part II)
23. Barbarian
24. Rats
25. Mater Tenebrarum
26. Splattered
27. Obliteration
28. Lord of the Dead (Mortician Part II)

Added: December 2nd 2013
Reviewer: Carl Sederholm
Score:
Related Link: Band Facebook Page
Hits: 2355
Language: english

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