MORTALS - Cursed To See The Future
August 9, 2014, 9 years ago
(Relapse Records)
Brooklyn’s Mortals may have a wildly forgettable band name but there’s enough going on in the tunes to make up for it. The trio crank through six songs here on their second album (first for Relapse) in 48 minutes, number-crunching of a kind that points to sludge and doom, of which there is certainly plenty here. The doom is of the heavy, urban-decay manner, the sort of blackened-soul tar that bands like Tombs spit out to much accolades. But it’s the blast-beat black metal parts that squeal past without leaving much impression; take a tune like the hefty ‘Epochryphal Gloom’, which offers much in the way of sonic declaration when going slow and low, but when it picks up the pace it just sort of races past without much impact. Yet, it’s the combination of all these sounds that makes Mortals special, the whole adding up to more than it initially seems, the band creating a scraggly, raw atmosphere that a young Tom G. Warrior would certainly approve of. And, unlike lots of bands plying similarly extreme trades, there are dynamics, as the swelling ‘The Summoning’ proves; indeed, the band’s sound is hard to warm up to, but it's worth the struggle, the payoff being dense, rewarding extreme metal.