Mortum are a band from New Jersey that has been featured before in this zine and plays a very raw and melodic form of black metal and this is a review of their 2015 ep "Ascending Calamity" which was released by Vanguard Productions.
A very raw and lo-fi black metal sound starts off the ep along with a great amount of blast beats and a few seconds later dark yet melodic guitar leads are added onto the recording briefly but also make their return throughout the recording and when vocals are added into the music they are grim and high pitched black metal screams.
Most of the music is very heavily rooted in the early 90's and the songs also bring in a great mixture of slow, mid paced and fast parts along with some atmospheric elements being used at times and a couple of the tracks are very long and epic in length and the songs bring in a great mixture of both U.S and European black metal influences from the glory days of the genre.
Mortum creates another old school black metal recording that takes the raw, melodic, epic and atmospheric structures of the genre and also ignores all of the trends that have come and go in the past 20 years, the production sounds very raw and old school while the lyrics cover misanthropy, death, darkness, and depression themes.
In my opinion this is another great sounding recording from Mortum and if you are a fan of the raw, old school and atmospheric forms of black metal, you should check out this cassette. RECOMMENDED TRACKS INCLUDE "Ascending Calamity" and "An Elgiac Hymn To Death". 8 out of 10.
http://mortum1.bandcamp.com/
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