They don’t waste much time getting into it with the opener, which is called “Ectoplasmic Violation.” No ambient extended intros here. They’re just going to go for your throat with the vocals starting almost immediately. There’s a solid hook in the chorus, which is complemented by a little bit of a tech death style “widdly widdly.” It’s short, punchy, powerful, and a hell of an opener.

“Appeasing Thantos” is the next one I’ll mention, which is track 3. It definitely toes that line between brutal death metal and tech death, but let’s not pull punches here. A large amount of this album does the same. There’s a great, although buried verse riff, and a solid “outro” section, which is a far cleaner guitar passage than you’ll hear on the rest of the album.

Overall, my favorite track is “Voices of the Wailing Deceased.” It’s track number 5 and is the longest one. I dig it because of the vocal hook which occurs in the chorus. You know, the place where the vocal hook should happen. I mention this only because a lot of bands of this ilk unfortunately do not know how to write hooks and therefore make the songs less than memorable. No problem here, friends.

I’ll bring up Track 9, “Pagan Orgies to Human Sacrifice,” which needs mentioned just because of the name. It’s also a pretty fast-paced banger which rarely (read: never) lets off the gas.

On the closing track, “Forsaken Graves of Infant Kings,” the band takes a little more of a different route. It begins with a dissonant guitar part with some “ohms” emanating from beyond. A heavy, grooving guitar part begins before the vocals do. On this one, they spread their wings, but not too much, and it’s over pretty much before it starts.

With tech death, the same questions for me always arise; Do they write good songs? If so, do they write great songs? Lastly, is the production good? Well, yes, yes, and yes. The production here is better than 95% of tech death out there, and the songs are as well. The one minor complaint is that it’s maybe one track too long. Yes, it’s still barely under 40 minutes, but perhaps a track could have been cut off. Usually, this is not my sub-genre of choice, but I do indulge in it on occasion. If you have an itch for some well-played, well-produced tech death, this’ll scratch it.

This is one of those reviews where I could probably end it right there, but out of respect to Clawhammer PR and the band, I should probably delve a little deeper, though it might take some real effort.  The album clocks in at around 25 minutes and the 10 tracks (8 actual songs) are short, sharp stabs of pure death metal and tend to blend together into a single vortex of savagery. Devon Ferrara has a powerful, typical but not too guttural bellow, and the production is clean yet burly, all fitting into the genre’s typical hues.

After a carrion infested intro “Among the Deceased”, which you can almost smell, the band kick into “Modes of Vitriol” and that’s pretty much the tempo for the rest of the album. A couple of slower grooves and even a solo or too break up the blasting, but otherwise, Mountains of Dead is a sonic jackhammer from start to finish. Mind you, it’s not a mindless, hyper blast fest. There’s that Floridan sense of control to tracks like “Gnostic Decimation”, “Casket Made of Ivory” and “Shut the the Fuck up and Die” ( a death metal singalong anthem if ever there was one) and the mammoth title track, which also have those aforementioned solos and tempo shifts to give the album just enough sense of change to keep it from being boring. And the songs’ brevity helps also.

Mountains of Dead isn’t going to change death metal or end up on any year-end lists. Still, it’s nice to see death metal this solid come out of Missouri, even if they make no bones about their sound or influences.