Ehhh, I'm not into this. The band is made up of ex-members of Incantation and Necrotomie playing raw death metal with a really old school vibe, but the recording is crap. It sounds like an old demo, which would be fine if that's what it was, but it's not. The songs are also entirely too long, most running more than four or five minutes, and almost all of them feeling like they should be over around three minutes or so. One of the reasons I think the songs might feel so long is that the riffs are a lot slower than one would expect, even bordering on some doomy passages. They do mix it up with a level of speed at times, but this is definitely in the vein of really early death metal. They close with a cover of "Destined to Fester" by Autopsy, and it's one of the best songs herein - from a band that seems to have had a major influence on Mausoleum. Now, the recording... it's just a mess. The output volume is pretty quiet, the sound is one of the muddiest things I've ever heard in my entire life, and the levels are inconsistent and out of whack. You can hear the vocals more than anything, followed by the drums, and then the guitars tend to get shuffled around, sometimes more tangible than others. It's really sloppy and ineffective. The performances aren't that bad, but the production is inexcusable in my book. There's no reason this needs to sound like it does. With this one the layout's sort of 50/50. I hate the band logo and I don't think it fits their aesthetic at all, but the cover art is alright, and I like the black and white illustrations inside the booklet with the sketchy looking lyrics. But the drawing on the back of the booklet, while not bad, further solidifies the inconsistency of the appearance here, and the lyrics are insanely hard to read because they're printed so faintly over the black background. Not that it really matters, I mean, titles like "Entombed in the Womb" and "Horrifying World of Disembodied Souls" definitely hint at what's contained, but still... I think these songs are alright, but I can't listen to this. With a better recording they could really have something, I'm just totally lost as to why it ended up sounding like this. I don't know if it was a budget thing or a trying to sound "totally retro" deal or whatever... but they've failed on that front.
[Razorback]
Running time - 38:55, Tracks: 9
[Notable tracks: Tombs of the Blind Dead, Destined to Fester]
Razorback Records - http://www.razorbackrecords.com
