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LEFT TO DIE “Initium Mortis”
LEFT TO DIE “Initium Mortis”
By Dr. Abner Mality
The poster for the classic 70’s horror anthology “Tales From The Crypt” featured a skull with a nice shiny eyeball still in it and the words “DEATH LIVES!” in big letters. That could easily be the cover for “Initium Mortis” (the one they used is pretty cool…Ed Repka, I think!) and also the credo that LEFT TO DIE lives for. For here we have another band paying tribute to the legacy of DEATH, one of the founding fathers of death metal.
LEFT TO DIE take a trip back in time to the mid-80’s, when DEATH was just getting its start as MANTAS. “Initium Mortis” features demo tracks from the earliest days of the band, before “Scream Bloody Gore” took the music world by storm. The lineup of the band is perfect for this mission…well-traveled Rick Rozz and Terry Butler, who have been in the Florida DM scene since those days and were actually in the band during this time. Joining them are the incredibly prolific Matt Harvey of another DEATH tribute band, GRUESOME and also drummer Gus Rios from GRUESOME and other oldschool DM outfits.
If you’ve been into death metal since the beginning, this record can’t help but bring a tear to your eye. This was from the age before tech-death, dissonant death, goregrind, slam and deathcore. And it sounds better for it! Songs are mostly short, with only two exceeding three minutes, and laser focused on simple headbanging riffs. Think thrash metal but more downtuned and morbid. Matt Harvey once again does an amazing job imitating the early vocals of Chuck Schuldiner…he is eerily similar to the legend who has been gone well over 20 years now. The production is modern and clear, yet not dissimilar at all to what was heard on “Scream Bloody Gore” and “Leprosy”.
Opening track “Legion of Doom” to me is the least impressive on the album. Even taking into account the simplicity of the time it was first written, it’s just too basic. Second track “Archangel” picks up the pace nicely and you can hear faint traces of the later, more progressive DEATH here. “Rise Of Satan” is much the same. But I really love the fast, furious and lean to the bone rippers like “Witch Of Hell”, “Zombie” and “Death By Metal”. There’s just something pure and clean about this unadorned yet brutal early death metal.
The song that really caused me to tear up was “Mantas”, which was the actual name of the band during the period it was written. There is something about the riffing here that does bring the likes of VENOM, ONSLAUGHT and SODOM to mind. It doesn’t have that “DEATH” sound yet. Which makes it refreshingly different.
This is just a fun and nostalgic album to listen to. It will have special meaning to those who were there during the dawn of death metal. For younger listeners (and I hope there are some), it’s a great introduction to the roots of a scene that maybe has grown too far from those roots. Pick this one up for sure if you’re not into wimp metal!
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