There’s an awful lot of metal out there these days. Death metal especially. So the question is, seeing as everyone seems to be trying their hand at it, how can you get yourself noticed? How can you stand out from the crowd? Or of course you can ignore those questions completely and go for how much will it cost you to knock out a load of hackneyed old crap and release it yourself and make millions because everyone loves Lamb of God, right? That, predictably, is the route that disappointing Portuguese death-heads Morbid Death have gone with on this 7 track E.P. after a six year hiatus.
So despite a few poorly received albums in the late Nineties and early Noughties, they now look to be having another crack at things. Let’s get one thing straight. Morbid Death are not a terrible band, instead they suffer from something far worse. They are boring. Simple as that. There’s aggression there sure enough, the vocals are passable, but only passable. One thing I will say however is that ‘Metamorphic Reaction’ does get better with every listen, but that was a reasonably easy task after my first one where I zoned out by the second song and got lost in looking out the train window. Opening track ‘Abomination’ is better than I first gave it credit for, although I might as well say now that it’s the best thing on here. The guitars and drums churn along at a nicely rapid rate and makes up for the fact that it occasionally slips out of time, or that singer Ricardo Santos rasps along in such a dull manner, I imagine he’s just barking out items from a shopping list rather than ranting about Abominations. ‘Damaged’ carries along quite reasonably too, with Santos now seemingly in the fresh fruit and veg aisle, and the rest of the band losing their way with their own song half way through, so decide to start playing Lamb Of God’s ‘Laid To Rest’ instead, presumably to see who gives a fuck.
Whilst things were not going splendidly up to this point, the quality takes a bit of a dive from here. ‘Absence of Light’, is without question one of the most deathly dull death songs I’ve heard in ages, which is then ruined further by a totally tuneless cleanly sung break in the middle. It’s an experience that creeps up on you and attacks you by driving a pencil into your ear with a hammer. So when you have a seven track E.P. on which to convince everybody of your outstanding metal credentials, what is the best thing to put right in the middle of it? Yes, that’s correct, boy at the back! If you are Morbid Death what you do is you bung in a 2 minute relaxing electronic plinky-plonky instrumental that bears no resemblance whatsoever to the rest of the album. Why use it as an intro or an outro, when you can slap it right in, centre stage? Well done there, a brave decision. From here on the only thing of note worth mentioning is the track ‘Paranoid Eyes’, which sounds rather incongruously slow, light, and yet intricate. Any positive effect is negated by Santos, now in the toiletries aisle, once again tunelessly stumbling away with his clean vocal styling. It’s nails down a blackboard. It’s drowning kittens. It’s pretty bloody bad.
Some of the above may seem a bit harsh on reflection, because I’ve heard a lot worse in terms of actual musical quality, but what really grinds my gears here is that they’ve committed the cardinal sin of being boring. Metal music shouldn’t be boring, it should inspire and motivate. It should make you want to take on the world and his mates and then win. Instead, ‘Metamorphic Reaction’ is the soundtrack to a weekly shop in Tesco. Perhaps they would consider changing their name to Moribund Death…
http://www.myspace.com/morbiddeathband
