Mr Death - Detached from Life
Agonia Records
Death Metal
11 songs (31:31)
Release year: 0
Official Myspace, Agonia Records
Reviewed by Charles
This is very simple music. Perhaps a little bit too simple for many people’s tastes, unless you are a die hard Jungle Rot fan. There is “no frills” death metal, and then there is Mr. Death, who at the very mention of the word “frill” fly into a furious rage, exclaiming “Frills?! This is not a little girl’s sixth birthday party!” and proceed to tear down and set on fire the nearest item they can find that serves any purpose other than total functionalism. Take that, sentimental mantelpiece photos!

Great cover, though; an homage to that pinnacle of human cultural achievement, the video nasty. It reminds me of any number of glorious films from the 1980s- perhaps Andrea Bianchi’s unsurpassable Night of Terror, as well as the less illustrious likes of Claudio Fragasso’s nonsensical After Death (also known as Zombie Flesh Eaters 3, Brits!). The album looks like it should be bookended by some creepy synth intros and outros, but it’s not to be.

Suiting the time period, the chief inspiration here is, I would say, Scream Bloody Gore. Detached from Life has a similar weighty and pummelling sound. But it drops a lot of the surprising catchiness of that album in favour of a more relentlessly blasting power. There are barely any solos, and the whole thing is a bit of a “bang bang bang bang finished” job. There’s also a bit of Obituary in there as well, I’d say, in that it’s not completely averse to breaking down into necksnapping groovers, as with A Dying God. In the intensity of the percussion I also hear some early Deicide. So it’s an amalgamation of death metal classics, really.

As such, only go for this if you are a total death metal purist. If you are, there’s no reason why you won’t dig it. It does have heaviosity and energy, to be sure. It’s one of those albums where it’s very difficult to pick out individual highpoints because across its short (half hour) running time there is very little variation. It’s route one, and by “route one” I mean it steams from riff to brutal riff so single-mindedly that even the most exciting innovations of the last 15 years cannot distract it from its chosen path.

Killing Songs :
Suffer, A Dying God
Charles quoted 67 / 100
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