Mortician

The more metal changes, the more death metal doesn’t, and New Yawkers Mortician certainly live by this credo. Celebrating their ten-year anniversary with their fifth full-length, Darkest Day Of Horror underlines once again what makes the dynamic duo of bassist/vocalist Will Rahmer and guitarist/drum programmer Roger Beaujard so vital to the underground scene: inhumanly fast drums (via machine), gurgling guitar riffage, ultra-down-tuned bass tones, and vocals so low that they sound inspired by a bathroom tub drain. Prefaced by a minute-long horror movie snippet, "Audra” begins the blood feast that doesn’t stop until the 20th track, "The Final Sacrifice” (with a sample from Stephen King’s Children Of The Corn). "Voodoo Curse,” "Massacred,” and "Chopped To Pieces” offer quick and painless deaths with slower, doomier choruses while "Human Puzzle,” "Mangled,” and the title track advance mid-paced like Obituary with frequent blastbeat interludes. "Ghost House” plods along extra slow like Mythic to great effect, and the Morbid Angel-ic "Carving Flesh” returns the band to the dark grandeur of ’97’s Hacked Up For Barbecue and ’98’s Zombie Apocalypse EP. Mortician still carry the torch of obscure B-movie intros, this time including such cult classics as I Spit On Your Grave and Dead And Buried. Twenty tracks in under 40 minutes (like any good death-metal release), Darkest Day Of Horror is pure manglecore mayhem.