ORDER OF DECAY
ORDER OF DECAY “Mortification Rites”
By Dr. Abner Mality
If you want to feel really, REALLY doomed and miserable, here’s a new band from the musty catacombs of Scotland to help you on the path to obliteration. Doom-death seems to be an exploding subgenre in these times of global darkness...ORDER OF DECAY dive into the deep end of it and have no plans of surfacing for air.
If you take all the Gothic melody, pianos, strings and clean vocals from MY DYING BRIDE and PARADISE LOST, you are left with the pared down oppression of “Mortification Rites”. The originality quotient is zero, but they are so utterly focused on slow motion horror that this whole record sounds like it was recorded in an ancient Scottish sepulcher. The high point (or rather, low point) can be found in “Necrotic” and “Bone Lords”. This is like PARADISE LOST’s “Lost Paradise” updated for the modern day and just as crushing and cheerless. There are bits of gloomy ambience throughout the record to enhance the general morbidity and they work really well. The track “Charnel Meditations” is such a soundscape that lasts for over 3 minutes and it’s just as essential to the album as any other track.
I do like the fact that they don’t stretch out song lengths unnecessarily. “Bone Lords” is the longest at just over 7 minutes. No time for boredom to set in, which is something that other doom-death bands that have been around a lot longer can learn. In some spots, they sound so familiar that they come across as a re-hash, but they are so committed to absolute lightless doom that they rise above any setbacks. This is one gruesome piece of sonic torment.