Review: MORDENIAL “The Plague”

MORDENIAL “The Plague”
Black Lion Records

Västervik isn’t, even as on Swedish conditions, big city – number of inhabitants is around 21.000. But this is surely old one. This is not so clear when it was found, but probably somewhere at the turn of XII and XIII century. Interesting fact from history of the city is that it was moved in 1433. Now in Västervik’s primal location lays another city called Gamleby.

Roots of MORDENIAL are in 2000 when it was formed as a project. In 2002 two-track demo ‘From Ashes Risen’ was recorded. But history of real band began six years later when Fiebig and Kjetil started to write material for the first album. Progress of this process was rather slow because Fiebig had no time. Besides, there was problem with finding right bassist/second guitarist. That’s why guys started to record their 1^st full-length spring 2012. Anyways, problems didn’t take the end because they lost a vocalist and it was mission impossible to find another one. That’s why ‘Where the Angels Fall’ was early 2015. Then, it seems, guys hadn’t bad luck and new album have seen light of the day after relative short time.

On ‘The Plague’ we’re able to listen to ten normally long songs. And I have to tell you that they’re interesting ones – both from technical, structural and even arrangement’s points of view. Well, this is nothing cutting-edge what guys serve us. But it’s solid piece of music for sure. Swedish describe their creativity using term Melodic Thrash/Death Metal. And in fact I can easily find here elements of both mentioned sib-genres of Metal and this is surely melodic as well.

Tempo is mostly middle one, but there’re some drums’ speed-ups here. And they can definitely be connoted with Death Metal. Fiebig beats with imagination what means some passages and so on. He’s also responsible for vocals in MORDENIAL. I don’t know how it is with you, but when I hear/read about drummer who also takes care about vocals then Chris Reifert comes on my mind directly. But well, this connotation in case of Västervik’s residents has almost nothing to do with. Of course Matthias presents growling, but it’s other one than Chris’ one. I think much better comparison would be here Mikael Stanne – I mean first of all manner of singing. Riffs are various and it happens really a lot on this field here. Kjetil shows that playing guitar isn’t anything mysterious for him. Some riffs can be recognize as easy ones (even if they’re not), but if you’ll listen carefully then you’ll notice technique in them. Sometimes we have also some not as easy as anything solos.

So if somebody likes melodic playing then this band is her/him! For me there’s too less brutality or/and aggression in that. I can to listen to stuff like that from time to time, but frankly I prefer more extreme subgenres of our beloved music!