Chilean band Mortify presents an effort of notable poise and maturity on just their second full-length album. The main strength on full display in this release lies in the confident songwriting: all of the familiar ingredients are present – blast-beats, doom-paced sections, chromatic riffing, feverish solos, as well as acoustic interludes cohesive with the album’s general tone, and we couldn’t exactly ascribe an element of extravagant innovation to the content; the sheer strength of the composition, however, allows for some bold creative choices and directions that elevate it beyond most modern executions of the style and, most importantly, reveal a unique vision at the heart of the initiative – precisely what most other attempts lack. The best approximation could perhaps be a band like Atrocity in its decidedly adventurous approach (one could call it “progressive”) that grants the material an assuredly unique voice despite the relatively “orthodox” stylings and presentation.
The music’s fluidity, one of the main signs of conviction and command of the tools at hand, is one of its most striking aspects, demonstrating the band’s assured handling of the ideas they’re working with. Songs cycle through multiple sections, frequently changing the pace and introducing elements such as clean guitars and leads in ways that are sometimes unexpected. The overall picture is one of apocalyptic fury and all-enveloping cosmic horror, asserting itself through the more and specially in the blistering solos that deliriously spring from the music in often unconventional harmonizations, in a manner similar to Trey Azagthoth’s more experimental soloing in the latter phase of Morbid Angel’s career, and likewise suggestive of the insanity inevitably awaiting man at the end of certain forbidden realizations.
Despite these touches and the generally progressive character of the composition, the music remains remarkably contained throughout the album’s runtime, never really ceding to meandering digressions or gratuitous displays of technique; every section seems carefully prepared by the ones before it, with the lead guitars and solos seeming to emerge as natural outgrowths of the songs’ preceding movements and carrying all their cumulative weight. This grants the arrangements a sense of purpose, as the different elements, even in the strangest sections and contrasts, seem to build towards a conclusion. One only needs to take a look, for example, at how the third track’s conclusion recapitulates the previous moments in their differing tempi. The ominous interludes contribute to the more mysterious component of the album’s atmosphere, evoking the desolation of a cosmos of secrets unknowable and ultimately silent regarding mankind’s most agonized questions. The vocal style is strikingly reminiscent of David Vincent’s legendary turn on Morbid Angel’s iconic early triptych, and that thankfully includes the versatility in the adoption of various intonations and nuances according to the context at hand, creating a much more immersive effect than the one-dimensional assault that defines many of the style’s vocalists.
Fragments at the Edge of Sorrow will likely activate all of the associations that fans hold regarding death metal in both its thematic and musical tendencies, while leaving no doubts regarding their own identity and the clear impulse to bring new ideas to life through a fitting pre-existing format. The production (a marked improvement from the first album) also deserves mention in its highlighting of the band’s strengths by setting up the warm spaciousness that best fits the music. Every instrument is allowed the space to breathe properly with even the bass guitar being given a chance at some acerbic stabs on key moments. Guitars shine through a solid tone through which the melodies can be heard carven in the , while the drums are made to exert their indispensable influence from a relatively background position. At no point does any of the instruments threaten to drown the mix, meaning that even the sections that go for an “overwhelming” effect, like the combined vocal/blast-beat attacks or screeching multi-layered solos, are rendered in a sharp and perfectly audible presentation, in keeping with the controlled posture on display throughout the album. It is thanks to this approach that the guttural vocals almost seem to come from a separate space from the remaining sounds, a testament to the mix’s “openness” and what we could call a “cinematic” quality thus produced which wouldn’t be possible in an ultra-compressed alternative.
What Mortify deliver on this album is in every way consistent with what death metal has been typically exploring since its early days, a glimpse of otherworldly horrors and suggestions of maddening revelations at the edge of human perception. To this effect, the band mobilizes odd time signatures and restless tempo changes, a preoccupation with ambiance, some unexpected developments and uncanny turns of the lead guitar, among the more typical techniques and riff styles. In this sense, we could place them in the same category as the genre’s daring trailblazers, like the aforementioned Atrocity and Morbid Angel or bands like Atheist and Pestilence, whose inventive attitude led them to new horizons within what had already been established as the more or less solid framework of what came to be known as “classic” death metal – a format that many contemporary bands sadly seek to emulate without any substantial creative touch of their own. For once, Mortify point to a much more constructive approach, and we hope they continue to hone in on their vision for upcoming releases.
