Mortician - Mortal Massacre (1991)

I've always found it to be painfully tragic that the intros on any one Mortician release are usually, at the very least, double the length of the song itself. Of course, it doesn't help that the band persists on stuffing every last bit of useless dialogue into the equation rather than singling out and focusing on the "punchline" and then... ZAP! Instead, you're "treated" to having endure 5 casual minutes of breathing, footsteps, screaming, bad
acting and a wide array of sound effects until, finally, the band belts out a cool 52 second track for your listening displeasure.

Actually, aside from the endless amount of gratuitous intros, I quite like Mortician, though I've learned through the years that I can only tolerate them in extremely small doses, which is probably why I tend to favor their ep's over their full length endeavors, not to mention that the band's stronger material has almost predictably been released in 7" format. It seems like the band tends to drop the ball when coming up with an albums worth of material. That's not to say that there aren't prized gems to be found on any one of their LP's, but there usually tends to be a great deal of monotony as well, despite the speedy pace.

The fact that Mortician has been employing the services of a drum machine for the last 20 years hasn't bothered me in the slightest bit (though the band did have an actual drummer within their ranks on this 'ep' as well as their earlier material). I'm also not one of those people who cries and makes a big deal about bands who use triggers. There are far worse offenses committed in the metal world. The number one draw for me when it comes to Mortician is the band's ridiculously heavy sound. I remember thinking how much of an improvement 'Mortal Massacre' was over the 'Brutally Mutilated' ep, not to mention the fact that Will Rahmer's vocals took a turn for the ungodly the second time around.

Where Mortician truly succeeds is when they drop the tempo and proceed to slowly chug your ass to death. I mean, seriously, when you have a guitar sound that fucking heavy, you owe it to the listener to pummel them into a hot red sticky mush with a generous assault of down picked mutes embellished by an inhumanly low and ghoulish vocal croak that lasts the duration.

I believe Mortician would be taken a bit more seriously if they would cut out 3/4's of the intro's and perhaps weed out a bit of their weaker fare. When it comes to heaviness and primal brutality, I'd much rather listen to Mortician than any one of the 90,000,00 'D' bands that hail from Texas and California, but unfortunately, when I am actually in the mood for this style of music, I don't want to sit through 5-10 minutes of some low budget intro to finally get the ball rolling. It's like watching a program on one of those channels that persist on shoving a commercial down your throat every 5 minutes.