Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Backyard Mortuary - Lure of the Occult [2012]

The band name, album cover, and logo should indicate without any doubt the kind of toxic onslaught you're dealing with here. Yep, Australia's Backyard Mortuary is another old school death metal band laying fresh bricks upon the tried and true groundwork cultivated over twenty years ago by the genre's greats. In a world where hundreds of similar discs are tucked away in warehouses nationwide never to be heard from ever again (ET-style), it gets continually more difficult to stand out and put forth a genuinely captivating effort. However, if Lure of the Occult is any indication, this band is here to stay while severing some heads in the process.

No, Backyard Mortuary isn't exactly reinventing the wheel here or even breathing life into an already bustling revitalization, but that makes this record no less pummeling. Every song here is bursting at the seams with bludgeoning riffs aged to perfection. The variation in speed keeps it all flowing, never congealing too heavily into a homogeneous mixture of pacing. Sometimes it busts into flurries of straight-laced speed a la Scream Bloody Gore, only to slow to a sinister grind and summon bleak churns of doom greatness. Just see the eight minute "Demon's Blood", whose initial setting of haste erodes into graduated domination. Personally the mid-paced parts just kill, showing the group settle into its best and most memorable rhythms. Listening to the title track, easily my favorite here with its absolutely crushing progressions, is like getting rabbit-punched repeatedly by Mike Tyson wearing brass knuckles, and most of the other songs channel a comparable level of intensity.

In the vocal department, this group couldn't get any better. Chris Archer's voice, which I would describe as a perfect mix of early Chuck Schuldiner and Martin Van Drunen, is basically the pure essence of death metal. His powerful growls simply envelop this album and bring it to new, tortured heights, with little touches like the demonic laughter in "Mutation" only adding to the morbid spectacle. It'd also be amiss not to mention the shocking production quality involved. This is probably the best I've heard any self-released album sound. Each instrument comes through with an appropriate tone of time capsule antiquity, yet the overall product reaches levels of clarity most modern big label groups could only dream of.

There are really no glaring flaws to point out, though a couple of the tracks don't leave as deep of an impression upon the memory as riff monsters like "Demon's Blood" and "Lure of the Occult" do. That's pardonable since this album still creates an awesome web of sounds even when it isn't directly knocking you out. At the end of the day, we have more resolute, old school bloodshed to bask in the glory of, and that's not an offering I'm willing to turn down. Lure of the Occult is one of the better debuts from a year already replete with worthy first efforts Add it to the shopping list along with the newest efforts from Horrendous, Pseudogod, and Undergang, and you'll be good to go until the next ritual arrives.

   
   Overall: 8.25/10 (Great - drink from the chalice)

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