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When I found out that Mortharm is a one man project I didn't have any anticipations at all... I just thought I'll give it a listen, and write my humble opinion on the sound of it. The advice of the artist was to listen to the songs called "Silent Rebellion" and "Pure Realism". Being the skeptic that I am, I of course listened to something called "Extreme Wish" at first. What you should expect from this one man project: it is basically a guy playing around on his computer with his guitar having no technical ear whatsoever, and not much knowledge on the art of mixing eighter. I'm not saying that this is a collection of crap, because there ARE some very good ideas on there. I'm just saying that, when you start kicking around with a really bad drum machine, recording your guitars (with a bad distortion ) over them, and then adding amateur voice you can't expect to get very good material. The guitar part sometimes really catches your attention (because it does have its ups and downs too), but I just couldn't accept the amount of times everything is repetead. It tends to get boring... you don't really get to feel that you just want to hear more... and you don't experience the Opeth kind of saturation feeling either. It just does everything more times than needed - not everywhere though! Sometimes it could get a bit exciting.
The song "Silent Rebellion" is somewhat better recording-wise, but I still get really annoyed of the drum machine (it just has this irritating tone I can't get over... at least a better drum machine should have been chosen). The vocals, as I said earlier, are not brilliant either - but they are not necessarily bad - just a bit more something and... more aggression would definitely not hurt. Ok, I've sad a lot of nasty things so far, and it's about time (oh shit, I just heard a really bad bridge) to point out the ups of the music too. The songs are clearly the result of a lot of work... a lot of time might have been put into them, but that doesn't mean that we should necessarily accept them (I just dropped that habit of mine). If all these things were to be done with a band (maybe added keyboards too), and recorded in a good studio (more work on the vocal techniques), they would have the potential to really kick. But this way it is just a 4.50 (with indulgence). I just can't grade it any higher because, after all, we are comparing everything to the international scene, and not to the one in the neighbourhood. It just wouldn't be fare to assume that Mortharm could come anywhere close to The Black Beauty of the previous year (of course, I'm talking about the "Death Cult Armageddon" album). Word of advice: work this over man - it does have potential. Don't shy away, just cause of my harsh criticism (sorry about it) - needs work, but HAS potential.
| Tracklist |
| 1. The Man |
| 2. Extreme Wish |
| 3. Silent Rebellion |
| 4. Pure Realism |
| 5. Death Zone |
: 38.20
| Buy other Mortharm albums |
