The spooky season may be behind us, but death metal is always on the horizon. And so long as we are plowing ahead through this chaotic life it is important to be able to compartmentalize the constant insanity. Extreme music, I believe, helps with that. Take for instance the new Mors Verum EP The Living. A slice of death metal that
Canadian death trio Mors Verum are here to unleash their latest monster. Active since 2015, the band only has two other releases to their name, one in 2015, Indoctrination Forest, and a full-length in 2019, Deranged. Comprised of bassist/guitarist Mrudul Kamble (Gravitational Distortion, Ischemic), vocalist Lyndon Quadros, and drummer Greg Carvalho (Æpoch, Shadöccult), the group has set out to create some dismal death metal on their latest.
Listening to The Living is like having synesthesia. It has a very gray sound. As the breadth of bands that one could describe as “dissonant death metal” expands, the more this becomes apparent. Dissonance is something that lacks in harmony and comes across as atonal. This has been a good fit for describing bands like Teeth and Resin Tomb, and it is fitting here as well. The Living is a gloomy EP filled with plenty of brutality and hazy riffs. Over five tracks Mors Verum beat and brutalize the senses.
The track names act as a kind of command spelling: “Inside Death’s Womb Purge The Living”, and this is because this EP is a concept record. Mors Verum as the listener to meditate on the on life as an artifact of death. Something of a transitory stage between conscious existence and unconsciousness.
Opening with “Inside”, the band wastes no time in getting down to business. No frilly intro, just hard, heavy death metal. The track is not just a blind rush forward though. The gloom and doom that Mors Verum mix in is what really gives it that overcast feeling. It is a sense that both lingers at times and steamrolls at others. The ending of inside as it slithers away is a perfect example of this, followed by the very doomy intro to “Death’s”, it is even a little funeral doomy. However, the track does transition into a full-bore death metal track that sounds like it is beckoning from the void.
“Womb” opens quietly, washed out over some wisps of wind that sound like they are calling out from a cold canyon. It is an ambient track that breaks things up and gives the listener a few moments to meditate on the concept of the EP before “Purge” kicks in.
“Purge” is a track that immediately sounds epic and heavy. Towering, even. It is like it beckons from above a gray sea of clouds. And as it pushes onward whips up a bigger and bigger storm until there is a torrential downpour. Eventually, the storm breaks and we end on “The Living.” There has not been any hope within these last few tracks so don’t expect this to go out happy. “The Living” fires on and might be the most brutal track on the EP. It is a blast laden slice of misery that flirts very closely with deathgrind. This is the track where the EP opens like a chasm and swallows it all whole. A fitting end to a very brutal EP.
Mors Verum is a Latin phrase in case one did not guess that already. It paraphrases to “truth in death.” With The Living being an album about consciousness and unconsciousness, it is apparent that the trio has a theme going on and it is all more than just a name. If you have a taste for the darker side of philosophy or just death metal, it is time to dive in. This one is as dark as it is brutal.
Mors Verum Bandcamp | Facebook | YouTube | Instagram
Physical orders will be available for order soon on Total Dissonance Worship
