MORTICIAN – Domain Of Death / VINYL LP

Domain of Death is Mortician’s third full-length album. However, if you are familiar with the band’s previous releases, you will notice that this album is shorter and has fewer songs on it than the previous two full-lengths. Then there is the fact that two songs on this album are covers, much like the CD versions of House By the Cemetery and Zombie Apocalypse. Now, I am going off of memory from some interviews I read in the months before this album was released, but apparently the idea was initially to record an EP along the lines of the House By the Cemetery and Zombie Apocalypse CDs, but during the recording, Will and Roger ended up coming up with more ideas than were needed, so they basically decided to keep writing and turn the would-be EP in a full-length instead.

I will be upfront here and tell you outright that I really like this album. I first heard it by getting the limited tour edition before the artwork was ready, which I bought at a Mortician show. I remember cranking it in my truck that I had at the time repeatedly. I then bought the proper version with the full artwork, band photos, lyrics, etc. once it came out. After that, I bought the picture disc LP from Germany’s Morbid Records. Finally, I snagged the gatefold LP edition from Hell’s Headbangers.

Sound-wise, this album continues along the path Chainsaw Dismemberment was going, which had introduced some occasional bits of groove to the band’s sound. Domain of Death also continues the recycling of riffs that Chainsaw Dismemberment featured a good bit of. Essentially, Roger would take an existing riff and just rearrange it, making it a «new» riff. Maybe it was easier when working with the drum machine, but I don’t really know. For example, the opening song, «Brood of Evil», starts with the opening riff from «Lord of the Dead», just played more or less in reverse. Thankfully, he didn’t do that for the entire song or for the entire album, for that matter, so it is not that big of an issue, especially since the worst examples of this recycling/rearranging are from the shorter «sneeze and you’ll miss them» songs on the previous album and there are fewer instances of this on Domain of Death. The main other one I can think of on Domain is «Dr. Gore», which sounds pretty similar to Chainsaw’s «Fleshripper». «Dr. Gore» is a good song, nonetheless.

One of the strengths of this album, however, is the riffs in general, recycling issue aside. A couple of good examples would be «Domain of Death» and «Telepathic Terror». «Domain of Death» opens (after the requisite horror movie sample, in this case, from Mark of the Devil) with a bass riff, before the full band joins in on the riff. It sounds like Mortician, but it doesn’t blur with everything else the band has written. «Telepathic Terror», after a sample of the notorious «exploding head» scene from David Cronenberg’s Scanners kicks off with a slow, ominous riff, which makes a really nice comeback at the end of the song, coinciding with a brief sample that is mixed into the song, something Mortician rarely does. It is quite a standout moment, in my opinion.

There is also a sequel element to this album, ending with the song, «Necronomicon Ex Mortis», which is a continuation of House By the Cemetery’s «Noturam Demondo». The latter was influenced by The Evil Dead and the former by Evil Dead 2. This is something that seems to have carried over from the previous album which featured songs like the aforementioned «Lord of the Dead», as well as «Slaughterhouse (Part 2)».

Overall, I think the shorter length helps this album out. As much as I like Chainsaw Dismemberment, I think the band probably just included every song written around that time, whether it was really worth recording or not. Domain of Death’s mere 17 songs compared to Hacked Up for Barbecue’s 24 or Chainsaw Dismemberment’s 28 keeps this album relatively free of throwaway songs/filler. This isn’t the absolute best album by Mortician, but it is still among the top releases by the band. There are some great, memorable classics on here and the remaining songs are still well worth checking out.