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MORBIDITY
Revealed From Ashes

Memento Mori (2014)
Rating: 8/10

Playing good old-fashioned, fast death metal, Bangladeshi metallers Morbidity have finally released their long-awaited full-length dose. After a promising demo debut in 2012 (Pits Of Eternal Torment) and then a split project with Exorcised the following year (Impious Conjuration), I was pretty much chomping at the bit to hear this new eight-track opus and I’m glad to say it’s everything I had hoped for.

Now, Bangladesh is not the most likely place for gruesome death metal to emerge from, but I’m mightily pleased it has because Morbidity is quite a fleshy feast for the ears if you like rotten-sounding vocals, cavernous guitars and a meaty drum sound formed of various severed limbs.

So as not to confuse you with numerous other acts of the same name, I’ll introduce you to the band members on this release. First up we have vocalist Defiler, who, judging by his name, is more than happy to chew on a few bones while gnawing his way through the lyrics. He is backed by a veritable army of the dead in skull-thumper Israfel (who has since been replaced by Nefarious), whose unearthly quake is sure to splinter a few craniums. On either side of Israfel stand two gargoyles armed with guitars. Their names are Skorcher and Azerate, and it’s down to these guardians of the pit to provide the unearthly tremors which unfold throughout this 30-minute opus. We cannot forget the bass demon that is Sethos though, whose vibrations of doom emanate from the darkest corners known to man.

Of course, when all this is thrown together it makes for a rather rancid experience that is a nasty hybrid of deep, booming rhythms and cadaverous speed. It’s actually just a simple record – as all old school-sounding noises should be – but there’s such a gruesome quality throughout as the band shifts through a number of mouldy pieces like a wasp burrowing its head into a rotten apple. With elements of the rattling Swedish scene coupled with the likes of fellow gore gods Autopsy and, say, Coffins, this is a straightforward attempt at primeval pleasure that is channelled via the sickening strains of the rumbling ‘Morbidity’, the fusty ‘Skullcrusher’, and the stinking ‘Incarnation Of Death’.

Morbidity may not be the name on everyone’s lips at the moment, but if the next record is anything like this one, then it’d be a brave man who dismisses such decadence. As Revealed From Ashes proves, old school death metal has risen again, and from one of the unlikeliest continents.

Neil Arnold

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