Mortal Agony - No Place To Hide
This German Death/grind from Bavaria started in 1997, this is their forth release, and my first experience with the band. I must admit, upon my first listen, I am really not that impressed at all. There is a confusing combination of styles going one, in and out of brutal death, then grind, then something altogether more perplexing. It’s fine that a band has lots of ideas for songs, but I don’t like it when it is all mashed together into one or two tracks making them sound insignificant. At no point do I feel comfortable, there is no scope for enjoyment, you are off at every moment into another riff, another idea, it all sounds a little rushed if I want to pin my overall description down to one statement.
‘No Place To Hide’ sounds like Morbid Angel’s poor mechanized remix album trading blows with Soulfly (vocally) in its infancy, once the speed picks up, it’s much more palatable, but pig squeal vocals eventually lose my interest. The combination of death growls was more than enough and actually more suited to the music. The overall feel is of a highly compressed guitar sound possessing zero organic tone. There is some tight snare drumming, the kick drums are rapid and to the point even though the big metalcore-esq boom from the kick drum and breakdown suitably loses all of my interest. ‘To The Fallen’ also starts with promise that is quickly smashed in the mid-section with an almost crawling pace breakdown, followed by some jazzy guitar sequences and a pretty cool fretboard run actually. Once firing on full cylinders, Mortal Agony have something about them, what loses it for me is the breakdowns and the varying tempo changes, they simply lose all the momentum in whatever the tracks preceding moment was, this is a shame.
For me, there is little to get excited about, there are many ideas thrown into the mix with random execution making this sound like a mis-matched avalanche of noise, if the arrangements gained more composure, this may have been a different story, but sadly, I would give happily let this album pass me by.
‘No Place To Hide’ sounds like Morbid Angel’s poor mechanized remix album trading blows with Soulfly (vocally) in its infancy, once the speed picks up, it’s much more palatable, but pig squeal vocals eventually lose my interest. The combination of death growls was more than enough and actually more suited to the music. The overall feel is of a highly compressed guitar sound possessing zero organic tone. There is some tight snare drumming, the kick drums are rapid and to the point even though the big metalcore-esq boom from the kick drum and breakdown suitably loses all of my interest. ‘To The Fallen’ also starts with promise that is quickly smashed in the mid-section with an almost crawling pace breakdown, followed by some jazzy guitar sequences and a pretty cool fretboard run actually. Once firing on full cylinders, Mortal Agony have something about them, what loses it for me is the breakdowns and the varying tempo changes, they simply lose all the momentum in whatever the tracks preceding moment was, this is a shame.
For me, there is little to get excited about, there are many ideas thrown into the mix with random execution making this sound like a mis-matched avalanche of noise, if the arrangements gained more composure, this may have been a different story, but sadly, I would give happily let this album pass me by.
- Incoming
- No Place To Hide
- Prototype
- New World Order
- To The Fallen
- Discuss
- Beef Up Your Skills
- Don’t Read On Me
- Feel The Fire
- Get On My Trip
Reviewer: twansibon
Apr 11, 2012
Apr 11, 2012
Next review:
March Of The Hordes/Escape The Flesh - Split
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