MORTICIAN – Darkest Day Of Horror / VINYL LP

For those of you who have heard it already: well, what did you expect; it’s Mortician. Just another album, but I shouldn’t be so lethargic. I would say that “Darkest Day of Horror” is to date, their best effort. People would ask themselves though, how do you tell the albums apart? True, it’s very difficult, Mortician seems to thrive on the notion that the underground sound is better. And for them, that may be true-as the production never seems to change (in quality). Of course, if it did, they wouldn’t be the same old Mortician. Therefore, I find that those who distain from listening to Mortician, then boast that they need to develop their talent should attempt to indulge themselves in Mortician’s genre a tad more often. Then, make that decision on the foundation of their sound as a whole, not from album to album to album. That being said, let’s dig a little deeper…

There’s such a thing as being too underground. I would uphold that Mortician (and this album in particular) have crossed that boundary, doing so they have completely defined who they are. Half of the entire album is an assortment of sound clips from horror and/or cult movies. The other half is music. What a surprise, huh? In any event, what we have here is Mortician at the top of their game. The reason behind that is simply because from this album on, we get to hear longer songs, without interruption from sound clips. On average the only tracks that are straight music are those that are timed at under 1 minute. The final song on Darkest Day of Horror, ironically entitled “The Final Sacrifice” is tracked at 5 minutes (give or take). Yet, the intro (at least I thought) was going to last about 3 minutes. However, the intro is much shorter, and the music kicks in (in a well written style) for an excellent duration.

I would not contend that this release is as memorable (or catchy) as their EP “Zombie Apocalypse”, but they do produce some good riffs, since that’s all they have going for them anyway (so they may as well do it right, eh?). Well, we have nothing out of the ordinary here, people. All the characteristics of a Mortician CD are present: the slow-grinding riffs, the audio samples, the (occasionally) lightening-fast percussion, the handful of fast riffs the production can’t render coherent, the borderline inaudible vocalizations, and zombies! (There always has to be zombies!) At this point in their career (if you’d call it that), Mortician have somehow become a parody of themselves. While others took them seriously early on in their ‘career’, they didn’t evolve since then. I would not have wanted them to, though. There’s always going to be that one band for everyone that they like, but really aren’t that great. So ‘un-great’ that they can admit that the band in question genuinely isn’t talented (despite the fact that I would put up money to say that Mortician are talented; they just don’t use it).

Mortician are good at what they do. I suppose that that is the best possible way to phrase it. Someone has to do it, why not them? In conclusion, Darkest Day of Horror will please Mortician fans (especially if you get to see them live). In fact, it will please them greatly. However, newcomers aren’t welcome. They’ll either be scared off, or pissed off. One way or another: they’ll be off. And leave it to the fans to listen to this fine recording in peace.

Once again; only for Mortician fans. Just like the rest of their albums-you have been warned!