Time Signature
Paradise of the metal...
Genre: death metal
Do you like your death metal old school? Then this release by Morta Skuld is the perfect choice for you. It is just about as old school as it gets, and, what's more, it was released in 1994, smack in the middle of the death metal heyday of the 1990s.
The music on this release basically combines the heaviness of Bolt Thrower, the crushing sound of Obituary and the level of technicality and sense of variation of "Spiritual Healing" and "Leprosy" era Death. The sound slike generic 90s death metal, you say? Well, I like to think of this release as capturing all the good things from 90s death metal without actually sounding generic or like the many rip-off acts of the era.
There are a lot of heavy parts and crushing riffs on this album, and even some groove too, and while there are thrash metal polka beats, the blast beats associated with modern death metal are absent - and I appreciate that - not that I dislike blastbeats or anything, I just appreciate a band that focuses on heaviness, riffage and breakdowns (but not in the way that has become popular in modern deathcore, I should act) rather than speed all time, and I've always been of the opinion that music can be brutal without being fast, and there certainly is a lot of brutality to this album. The bass may have a funny clunky sound, but I actually like how the bass has a prominent sound, and the band also utilize the bass very well, making use of bass-filled breaks and bass-drum parts to great effect.
I think that the vocals are perhaps a bit boring, and if there is anything generic about this release it's the vocals which are just standard growling. That being said, there is a certain rhytmicality to the vocals, which serves to remind that in death metal, the vocals are more of an almost percussive instrument than a tonal one.
In all, this is - or should have been - a death metal classic, which I think appeals to all fans of good old 90s death metal.