Tuesday, August 30, 2011

god has vanished

Not a massive amount to say about the following record really. A split 7" with two European death metal bands. Nominon from Sweden and Exorcism from Germany. "Morbid Tunes Of Death". Deathstrike Records, black wax of 800. I'd never heard either of these bands before two weeks ago. Not the most of conventional ways of getting into new music, I was prompted to check out both bands after constantly seeing the cover of this record popping up in my regular Swedeath eBay searches. There's alot of bands records that I regularly see the same way, but I was really interested in the cover so I thought I'd give it a go.
The two Exorcism tracks are cool. Lo-fi death metal with a pretty heavy late 80's vibe. High(ish) pitched vocals over the top of mid to fast paced riffage. From what I can find, they've also released a demo and contributed material to a few other split records.
Easily the better material on offer here is the single Nominon song, "Black Chapel". Active since the late 90's, alot of their stuff is comparable to early Unleashed and the like. With a handful of subsequent releases under their belts, this is the demo version of the song that featured on their LP from 2007, "Terra Necrosis". The majority of this bands catalogue, especially their later material, runs a reasonably clean course in terms of recording qualities, including the album version of this song. This demo version though, is far grittier and rougher and in my opinion far superior for it. It may also have something to do with that fact that this was the first version that I heard, as often is the case in situations like this. I won't analyse it though, if you like rough death metal, then you'd probably prefer this version. It's like the difference between Nihilist and Entombed, though I'm not arguing that I prefer Nihilist, you can't beat the recording on LHP.
I doubt i'd ever hunt for this record if I had to, but for the stock price I paid I am happy to own music by these two bands. The Nominon contribution especially- very cool song. The artwork is a catch too.

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