You can't be a brutal death metal fan and not like Mortician. That'd be too incompatible. Mortician is the most brutal of brutal, the rawest of raw, the heaviest of heavy. With Chainsaw Dismemberment as their weapon, Will, Roger and Desmond continue to wade through the carnage of the death metal underground.

This album is a little shorter than Hacked Up for Barbecue, but has a much fuller sound, not to mention the three more steps the band took in tuning down the guitars. It's probably their heaviest album since House by the Cemetery (my personal favorite). Wes Benscoter's cover art is considered so gruesome that some chain stores refuse to carry it. Did these people not see Mortician's past album covers?! This is Benscoter's eeriest work yet for Mortician, though.

This album consists of 28 tunes that will grind, blast and groove their way right through your bowels and burst from your ass, causing severe hemorrhaging. The horror samples are still present, though some are shorter than before, and the guys chose some really cool ones this time. With this full-length, the band throws in a little more of that New York groove sound and it makes for some brutal fucking noise! The groovy tempo of "Decayed" and the alternating doomy/speedy "Island of the Dead" will have fans banging their heads till they fall off. Will's vocal patterns have become a bit more varied while remaining deep as ever.

I ask again, how can anyone not love this band? Be sensible: horde all the Mortician stuff you can find. And go see them live!!!

© 1999 goden