Whereas label and country mates The Cleansing struck quickly with their second album, Denmark’s Spectral Mortuary took a little longer to muster up a follow up on one of 2007’s most over looked death metal albums. I’m glad to shout that the wait was definitely worth it, as Total Depravity is a monster of  death metal record!

Featuring former and live members of blast mongers Exmortem, Spectral Mortuary–unlike The Cleansing–doesn’t really have too many nods to the former act. Where The Cleansing can be tangibly traced to their Iniquity, Corpus Mortale and Usipian roots, Spectral Mortuary are a much more impressive beast than Exmortem ever were. Much burlier, heavier and varied, Spectral Mortuary are a perfect mix of death metal styles, and just a little bit nastier (particularly lyrically and thematically with song titles like “Found in Feces” and “Purulent Mass”) than their chunkier label mates.

Led by the impressive bellow of Morten Jørgensen, Spectral Mortuary deliver 37-minutes of bludgeoning death metal that culls from all over the death metal spectrum. You can hear Houwitser (so Sinister by default also), Brutality (Morten Jørgensen has a Scott Reigel-ish tone to his voice), Aborted, Suffocation and to these ears, later Skinless. But while those bands all come to mind, there’s never a blatant sense of plagiarism; by virtue of the band’s energy, ferocity and song writing chops manage to sound somewhat fresh.

As with all great death metal albums, it’s all about balance; slicing, pummeling blasts combined with moments of mid-paced mayhem (which again imbue a bit of Brutality) and skin peeling solos. And thusly tracks like “Absorbing the Bloodline”, “Defects of Depravity”, “Lapidated” and the slower “Torturous Attainment” will bring a grin to all death metal fanatics looking for something in death metal that isn’t a trend or a scene, but a pure, base level example of what all death metal should be.

[Visit the band's website]

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