EP REVIEW: Mortuary Drape – Wisdom Vibration Repent

Italian Black-Death / Doom Metal cult MORTUARY DRAPE recently unveiled a new EP via the legendary Peaceville Records. This band should require no introduction, so let’s indulge in the horror!

Gloomy guitars draw the creepy atmospherics into a blackened light with a simple but haunting riff. Monolithic bass lines crush alongside pummelled drums to give that churning low end that the band has always used to grand effect while the guitar and vocals crawl in the sonic spaces to spew a darkened and loathing energy forth. The mystical and doomy music has a massive sound that is writing with occult atmospherics and profoundly brilliant songwriting. Stomping grooves ensure the rhythm is almost tribal, very intoxicating indeed. While the layered guitars serpentine between rhythm and lead, while the bass contorts in its own space. This production allows the entire band creative freedom which is paramount to that Mortuary Drape sound.

There is a huge emphasis on the huge-sounding Doom Metal riffs while the mystifying Black / Death Metal extremity is no less present. In fact this duality allows the slow sections to drag more brutally, the faster parts to hit harder and everything to just feel more accentuated and exaggerated due to the excellent use of contrast. Glorious guitar solos occasionally make their presence to add some spice to the lead section while the music is definitely on the more rhythm-focussed side which is complex enough in its own right. Only select bands can use such estranged melodies so effectively and this is one. Similarly to transition from such subtle ambient moment to full on hammering metallic fury so seamlessly is a marvel in itself. Bookmarking the centre of this wondrous tome is a truly otherworldly Mercyful Fate cover that takes an obscure classic and contorts it into something utterly magnificent of their own. The way this sits so naturally between the 4 original pieces of mystic mastery is sublime.

These titans of Extreme Metal prowess once more offer something inarguably their own, inimitable and stupefying in all of its oddities and obscurity. Mortuary Drape are as self-defining and excellent as ever.