Origin: Stockholm, Sweden Release year: 2012 Label: F.D.A. Rekotz Genre: Death Metal It’s been primarily work that has kept me from regularly writing about Metal in the last months, but to be honest it’s also been a while since I’ve come across some Metal that could really pull my pisser properly. This week though, there were two bands that kicked me in the nuts and urinated on my gasping face. An awaking and refreshing experience!

One of those bands is Blood Mortized. They say they do Svensk Dödsmetal, but it sounds more like Swedish Death Metal to me. And of the honest type too! Raw, punishing and with the sensitivity of a corpse rising up from its grave. But at the same time with a shining clarity of production.

The band was formed at the back-end of 2007, but don’t think you’re dealing with a pack of young guns. These guys have plenty of experience. Vocalist Mattias Parkkila has worked with a host of different bands, including Stigmata. Anders Biazzi used to play the guitar in no less than Amon Amarth between ’91 and ’98. Drummer Mattias Borgh is in the recently resurrected Crypt of Kerberos and also guitarist Gustav Myrin and bassist Mattias Söderlund (that’s the band’s third Mattias) have years of experience.

Their second full-length record, The Key to a Black Heart was released in May of this year and contains eleven songs of reincarnated classic Swedish. Concrete-grinding guitars, jackhammer drums and a man grunting in death-bringing anger. Yes, Blood Mortized brings forth Metal with the efficiency of a demolition company. And then they got Death’s Rick Rozz to do a couple of sky-tearing solos on the album too (such as in Unleashing the Hounds). I’m really digging the shit out of this!

But more than the punch they pack, the band have managed to stir through a lovely thick groove, effectuated by a pummeling mix of bass drums and chugging strings. The Murder of God, the seventh song, is an ample illustration of this, but also songs like Burn & Die and The Heretic Possession deliver vividly.

Of a different inclination, Only Blood Can Tell and Rekviem are songs that move slower and more dooming. There are subtle melodies that account for a little harmony in a bulk of brutality, but not by far enough to turn things into cheesiness. Burn & Die, by the way, has a guitaring style that strongly hints at Biazzi’s Amon Amarth past; it has that same elemental heroic setting and they reinforce it with battle sounds too.

The Key to a Black Heart is an album to fall in love with and then get skullfucked by. In the band’s own words, this is ”old style dirty-rotten-unpolished Swedish Death Metal the way it was truly meant”. It’s a careful conservation of the past that was then improved by modern digital recording equipment. Svensk Dödsmetal!

My Grade: 9.0/10
Buy this when:

Tags: death, groove, old-school, Swedish

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 14th, 2012 at 8:09 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.