Gloria Morti have been busy for the last four years; 4 demos and now, the debut album. The band inked a deal with Japanese World Chaos Productions, but Scandinavian version of the debut is licensed by Finnish Firebox Records.

Gloria Morti perform modern extreme metal. They mix many different styles, ranging from death metal to thrash metal to black metal to industrial, with atmospheres generally being darkly dramatic and aggressive and nicely blending into each other. With all the styles utilized, the band manages to sound surprisingly fresh, even though there's not that much difference to Funeris Nocturnum's, or even Alghazanth's, work. One major difference with aforementioned Finnish hordes is Gloria Morti's use of death and thrash metal in their music, where Cannibal Corpseish pus-bubbling riffs and more modern thrash influences are audible (well, if 21st century Destruction can be counted as a modern influence). Maybe it's these influences that show, that the band's roots lie in 1980s mayhem. Anyway, many influences do not mean every song is something like 6 minutes long, which speaks for the good control over the things. This is clearly a band work, because composing is handled by two thirds of six members. Most of the songs are good or very good, but I personally feel that this more black metallish material is a bit of a bore (e.g. 'The Suffering of the Lambs' and 'In Their Dreaded Howling') with "devilish" piano work and all, used by Dimmu Borgir, Old Man's Child, etc. Mid-Eastern flavored death-blasts 'Pulchritude of Rotting' and 'Abattoir', however, makes me forget those average compositions.

The guitars are really ripping and heavy with some fantastic melodic playing, the bass is totally grinding, the synthesizer work varies from electric bleeps to dramatic orchestration and the drums are mostly fast as fuck. Blastbeat is more like the rule than the exception and I think the drummer should slow down a bit for the blasting, because it would make the band sound even heavier. Well, this way the tempo changes are more notable. While the aural range is well used, from sharp to mind numbingly heavy, the mix is sometimes very full. Too full, actually, because at times the synth and, luckily less, the guitars are buried under a huge amount of sound. Basically, there's two different vocal styles used: Maniac of Mayhem style agonized shrieking voice, but at least with more balls, and low death metal growls. Only three song's lyrics are printed, but these are quite average in general. I can't make nothing out of the cover art, but other photo collages look good enough.

This album mixes styles I both highly enjoy and styles I don't enjoy listening to. But even so, this is a good debut album. I'm surprised, that the label's genre "extreme metal" actually covers Gloria Morti's music well. Usually labels' marketing does not.

Rating: 7 (out of 10) ratings explained

Reviewed by Lane
09/07/2004 23:43