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MORDEO “Mordeo”
MORDEO “Mordeo”
By: Lord Randall
Composed of members of sludge / doom AMAROK, groovy deathsters ABERRANCE and LEVEL, California’s MORDEO arrive with what purports to be its own take on sludge / crust in the form of its self-titled debut.
“Bring Back The Fear” collides with the eardrums instantly, a brief Cro-Magnon thundering giving way to what sounds like the collective asses of IRON MONKEY, VARUKERS and FISTULA experiencing an electrified cattle prod enema. There’s not a sense of urgency here; there’s a slathering, spitting, bloody, heaving mess that demands heed be taken. Witness “Fight Your Friends”, a coiling, striking five-headed hydra on meth in sonic form. So much so that, roughly 1/3rd of the way through, when the annihilation fades into an ABSENT FROM BODY / RWAKE soundscape, hanging notes swinging in the ash-flecked breeze like charred bodies on meathooks, you’re jolted out of your hysteria by a calmness that evokes reverie. Worry not, you’ll be thankful for it later.
“The Narcissist” plays the reverse, beginning with a subdued, but lurking ambience before striking a napalm-dipped match and combusting all the fuck around the insides of your brainpan, reminiscent of THE ABOMINABLE IRON SLOTH or ZAO at their most brainsick. Demonic cicadas circle in the dark of “Interlude”, ushering in “Betrayal”, a filthy dirge that soon reeks of d-beat, blown P.A.s and the simply crushing rhythm section doing gladiator-style battle with riffs bent on pressing the pedal to the metal on their way through Dante’s circles of Hell.
It must be noted that the use of noise as an instrument is a tricky bitch at its simplest, rarely working near as well as hoped for, if at all. That so many experience disastrous results and we must suffer for it makes it so much more gratifying when texture, tone and terror are blended as well as they are here.
Ending with the frenzied “Profit For Prophets (Swamp Justice)”, MORDEO has crafted the most grime-soaked, hideous platter to assault these ears thus far this year.
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