Band: Mortifica
Album: Atrocious Autopsy
Record Label: Self-released
Release Date: January 1 2017
The Nitty Gritty: Metal as a genre is home to a lot of generic bands, but that’s not these bands’ fault. Some genres of metal aren’t breeding grounds for experimentation, innovation, or uniqueness. Take a genre like death metal, for instance, because at its core, it’s brutal, heavy, and aggressive. It’s not trying to be innovative, artsy, and weird, but it can be. There are bands that make things more unique, interesting, and different. Most bands in that vein are in the prog-death / tech-death camp, bands that bring progressive and technical aspects to their sound. One of those bands is Mortifica, a tech-death band that I happened to come across recently. They just released their debut LP, Atrocious Autopsy, and I decided to check it out, just for kicks. It’s some good stuff, but I’ll be frank – it’s pretty generic stuff. Even tech-death can be generic, because all that the genre requires is being good at playing your instruments. That’s it, but I don’t mean that as a bad thing whatsoever. This LP is very well done, as it’s a 34-minute tech-death monster, but if you don’t like the genre, you won’t get anything out of this.
Would I recommend this album? Like I said, if you’re not into this kind of music, I wouldn’t bother, because it doesn’t have any elements that make this album stick out, but if you’re looking to get into the genre, and you don’t want an album that has something more “familiar” around it, you’ll be fine with this. It’s only $5 on their Bandcamp, too. This is tech-death at its best, and that’s why it ultimately got a Nitty Gritty review, because there’s just not much to really say about this. It’s a very solid LP, definitely one of the best I’ve listened to in awhile, but there’s just not much to say that I haven’t already said about other albums. These guys are a primal tech-death band, nothing more and nothing less. It’s not a bad thing, though, because as long as you perform your style of music well, I can get into that, but that can be a bit of an issue for people that want to get tons more out of their music than just a well-done sound and musicians that can play their instruments. It’s an album that I’m happy I picked up, and it might be on my yearend list for 2017, but we’ll just have to see what else comes out first, eh?
