Morthus - The Abyss

MORTHUS - The Abyss (Self financed CD 2014)

Just look at that! What a sign of times it is that a complete newcomer and unknown band is able to self release their demo (or they called it an EP??) in such professional and cool way! Nowadays you simply don’t need a big budget and record label behind you to have a CD or digipack financed. Of course it also means that every crap can be now released “officially” and this way the scene is flooded with millions of anonymous bands, anonymous EPs / albums or whatever, of which many are probably totally worthless, but that’s not something what really takes away sleep from me. If there are such possibilities, then it’s nothing wrong that people take the chance and use it… and if the music sucks, then even the best packaging won’t help and that CD shall be flashed in the toiled. Here is a band called Morthus, which is quite young Polish band and they just really nicely self released their three tracker titled “The Abyss”. Quality digipack, great artwork… all looks really nice here, so congrats to the band for having such a cool idea for the digipack! Luckily for the band, the music is also decent and good enough, so it is not a wasted money and time!

I’m not saying that “The Abyss” impressed and crushed me totally. No, it’s not that good, but I am also far from saying it is worthless. I actually really like this demo, I like these songs and the whole experience when listening to “The Abyss” was more than positive. Sure, Morthus is still rather a second league band, kind of mediocre, but when I listen to their music I can see a lot of potential to become something better and better and it’s worthy not only to listen to “The Abyss” and enjoy three quite good songs, but it’s also worthy to remember the band name, ‘cause who knows what will they be capable of in the future? Musically it is quite melodic death metal, with a small hint of black metal a’la Sweden. I guess I can say that such Dissection, especially from “Reinkaos” LP, was a great influence for Morthus… just listen to “In the White Wolf’s Kingdom”, which I think is the best track here. But really all three songs from “The Abyss” are good, maybe sometimes too melodic for my taste (yeah hehe!) and sometimes I would prefer some faster, more aggressive and crushing stuff, but what the hell… it is definitely good enough to enjoy several listens. What else… good production, some cool riffs (like the opening old school theme for “Beast from the Abyss”), nice vocals arrangements and song structures, divided between more aggressive and melodic stuff... Morthus has everything people like in this sort of playing. So, keep your eyes open for the future of this young band.

Final rate: 70/100