With the Dec. 21 Mayan apocalypse drawing nigh, Morbus Chron has sated the world’s need for a fittingly dark soundtrack.
Swedish death metal band, Morbus Chron, released its debut album, “Sleepers In The Rift,” in the United States Wednesday.
The first song, “Through The Gaping Gate/ Coughing In A Coffin,” follows the standard death metal formula of background church bells and ambient audio balancing with the stereotypical sound of a death metal zombie apocalypse.
This, of course, is only the first 10 seconds of the track. It all builds up to the body of the song’s heavy strains from guitarist and vocalist Robert Andersson, anchored by reverberating drums from Adam Lindmark.
Surprisingly, the high note and fast tempo of an electric guitar usually featured early on in a lot of death metal albums isn’t really prevalent until one of the album’s final tracks, titled “Dead Body Pile Necrophile.”
Vocally, it is a widely accepted notion that death metal lyrics are hard to understand. That is, unless, you spend countless hours rewinding and repeating each track.
Fortunately, for those who do not speak Swedish, Morbus Chron’s vocals are equally difficult to make out. Andersson could be screaming in English, but because the way death metal is styled, it is difficult to pinpoint what language the lyrics are (this isn’t glam metal, after all). However, the hurried patterns that the vocalist uses are very reminiscent of those commonly used by American and British punk rock bands in the 1980s.
It is as if Morbus Chron took the quick rate and pace normally reserved for death metal guitar riffs and transposed them to the tempo at which its vocalist uses to belt out the lyrics. That said, “Sleepers In The Rift,” is not a bad album. The vocals are unique to the death metal genre and the riffs are impressive.
For a band that has released two demos, one EP, and has had a couple of feature gigs, Morbus Chron should have no problem gaining metal fans in the U.S.
Grade: B
