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MORTAL
As Life Leaves The Body

Self-released (2024)
Rating: 8/10

San Jose in California has just gotten noisier due to the arrival of death metal quartet Mortal. The crude cover art depicting a woman being dragged into the grave while hooded and faceless beings look on is quite the spectacle.

If you want a good example of a band correctly conjuring old school aggression then As Life Leaves The Body is the album for you. Straight from the sordid pits of 1990, Mortal digs up dense yet aggressive riffs that come coated in dirt. The production is perfect if you want to sniff the dusty vaults of a bygone era whereby no frills are attached.

After a short intro (‘As Life Leaves The Body’) the band dives into ‘Anatomical Crucifixion’, a primitive and murky track that hints towards the Floridian style of menace, particularly in the deep vocal bellows of guitarist Chris Villaseñor.

Flirtations with Morbid Angel are common throughout, but the ripples of clammy density can only be admired. A fine example of such macabre menace reveals itself on ‘Death Of A Thousand Cuts’, an organic chugfest that hits that sweet spot with mouldy aplomb. It’s a shame that rhythm guitarist Fili Vera has since departed from the band because his earthy tone brings such a whiff of humidity alongside the leads of Chris Villaseñor. Drummer Angus Fong and bassist Ricardo Sanchez bring ‘Chapel Of Bones’ to life as again the guitar swooshes like a foul blustery wind.

For me though it’s the more brooding episodes which enable the rotten wisps to permeate the air such as on ‘Hanged, Drawn, And Quartered’. This is an extremely atmospheric album awash with foreboding structures and grim tides of mayhem. ‘Exposure Of The Innards’ and closer ‘Horror Of Entombment’ showcase those passages of foaming aggression, but each and every track is a sodden, decomposed slab of meat that once consumed results in the listener succumbing to hallucinations of horror dredged straight from the halcyon days of morbid death metal.

Neil Arnold

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