Death Metal Album Of The Week: Rigor Mortis – Rigor Mortis

Whereas the structural and musical approach would not constitute for an FM-radio listener’s definition of ‘progressive’ this album is highly important and innovative in many ways. Given a nice thickening fuzz that anticipates the textural approach of the pioneers of Greek and Norse black metal, Mike Scaccia’s rhythm guitar is middle range yet lacks the crunch and the preferential techniques used in speed metal (constant palm muting, an emphasis on staccato), having  a much smoother sense of transition in execution than many speed metal and death metal peers. This also allows the other instruments to stand ground within this framework, helping a sense of musical advancement and accomplishment that is beyond mere head-banging fodder. Good word must also be given to his solo playing, which is intricate and whilst not dissonant evokes the more dignified of neo-classical shredder playing crossed with the King/Hanneman sonic attack.

Casey Orr’s bass as a result of this is made just as audible and distinct as the percussive backdrop, and almost as if to capitalise on the dark and foreboding atmospheres that Slayer and Possessed first realised on early works, we get a textural sense of craft that anticipates the outcomes of many important metal acts to follow, two major examples being Massacra and Mayhem. Bruce Corbitt’s vocal delivery is the typical rhythmic-cohesive delivery that is a mainstay of this musical field. It has lingering sense of camp in it’s mildly gore-fantasist lyrical depictions, resembling a cross between Dave Hewson of Slaughter and John Connelly from Nuclear Assault, with more of a rasp than a sung tone to it, perfectly fitting and well executed. Along with the work of Californian thrash unit Cryptic Slaughter, these Texans should be considered one of the more important missing links in the structural advancement of the extreme metal that was to flourish from the late 1980′s, and onwards…

Windham Hell – South Facing Epitaph

Darkthrone managed to conjure something far more stimulating to the imagination when they were inspired by horror and science-fiction movie soundtracks to create vast journeys of cosmic Death Metal. Windham Hell’s first album also follows from the deeper recesses of popular culture and cinema, fucking with the senses and expectations of the Metal listener through this Lynchian maze of psychological horror and ominous mortality. The first thing that’s evident about the musicians at work here, particularly the late Eric Freisen on guitars, is the uncustomary level of formal training demonstrated in these pieces, which bear close stylistic resemblance to the famous concertos of Antonio Vivaldi. The riffs that make up the bulk of actual Metal songs on this erratic album are nothing spectacular or unconventional but formed with the lead guitar in mind, acting much like the movie samples and vomitory vocals do to provide a kind of ambient feeling of suspended horror and panic that the leads then magnify through their virtuoso performances, building on the looming fear with sporadic outbursts of mental excitation. The rest of the album is a feast for those who would enjoy the subversion of popular culture through a post-modernist cutting and pasting of morbidly curious voices bridged with Classical flourishes, although may lose the attention of others. There is enough tastefully executed technique on show to keep this as engaging as possible, and a far superior album to the following ‘Window of Souls’.