Embedded Files
MORBIFIC “Squirm Beyond the Mortal Realm”
MORBIFIC “Squirm Beyond the Mortal Realm”
By Dr. Abner Mality
This is more putrid than a corpse that’s been rotting in the swamp for six months. It has a sound so raw that crackle and fuzz are an actual part of the “music”, a sound hailing back to the earliest days of demo tapes. And yet it works! There’s a true feeling of morbid horror to MORBIFIC that not many bands capture...even in these days when primitive death metal has become very trendy.
They hail from Finland and so are heirs of a tradition of gruesome death metal that includes the likes of FUNEBRE, DEMIGOD and the dawn of CONVULSE. For sure those bands formed the main diet of MORBIFIC while performing “Squirm Beyond the Mortal Realm”. There’s a peculiar twisted sound to their riffing, be it fast or slow, that stands out and it’s that riffing that keeps this from sounding like a complete throwaway. The guitar solos have a strange watery sound that seems like it coming from a tunnel to the underworld. No one in their right mind would call the guitar solos here technically brilliant, yet they have an atmosphere to them that sticks in your head. The vocals are MORTICIAN-like mumbles that barely rise above the ugliness of the bass.
They are spiritual brothers of Denmark’s UNDERGANG, but manage to have their own sound. Some of my favorites here would be “Bind, Torture, Snuff”, “Suicide Sanctum” and “Baptized in the Fluids of Decay”. But you can drop the needle anywhere here and be engulfed by MORBIFIC’s minimalist uber-primitivism. Certainly a record for only the most hardcore death fiends…
Report abuse