A Gathering of Human Artifacts

About 2 years after Mortal Decay presented its self-butchered pile of feces “Sickening Erotic Fanaticism”, which essentially rendered the band a self-parodying sexual joke laced with a pseudo-fetish for B grade horror porn, MDK records decided to compile all 3 of the original demos of the band onto one CD. Although Grim Reality was dropped (probably for time compression reasons as the CD is over 73 minutes long) and all the songs were re-mastered, everything on “A Gathering of Human Artifacts” is faithfully un-fucked around with.

Although the musicians in this band are obviously proficient, the true charm in its sound is provided by John Poline, whom I affectionately refer to as “The Belching Demon” for his over-the-top delivery of the bottom end Death grunt which essentially sounds like a demonic form of singspiel. In addition, particularly on the “Grisly Aftermath” material we also get some rather shrill high end shrieks that could almost pass for a Nazgul screaming out a garbled form of Mordorian Black Speech. What is accomplished on these re-mastered tracks is a sense of balance, which although Poline’s voice is a signature attraction, is still dependent upon a solid sound behind in order to realize the atmosphere needed for the dark words being spoken.

In terms of instrumentation, the drums are the principle beneficiary of the re-mastering process. Although they are not fully freed of the overtly high end tinge that they possessed, most notably the popping snare sound on the 2 latter demos, the rearrangement of the levels does well to hide these imperfections in the original instrument. Likewise, the muddy atmosphere of much of the material found on “Brutalizing Creations” has been cleaned up a bit, although again a clear difference still exists between the guitar sound on that particular group of songs and the rest of the stuff on here. The 2 acoustic tracks from “Dawn of Misery” have also been tweaked so that the guitar and synthesizer parts are in perfect harmony with each other, although obviously the occasional clank sounds on some of the arpeggios found on “Bereavement” can not be fully erased.

For fans of early Technical Death Metal whom are still hungry for more, this compilation contains the fruits of a New Jersey outfit that was reaching for the same ideals as the original pioneers of the genre. It’s aggressive, it’s technical, it’s horrific, but above all its quality metal that is still waiting for the audience it deserves. Some will likely go for the earlier stuff rather than what is found on the last demo (myself being one of them), but all in all the entire CD listens well and flows smoothly from start to finish.