SHORT BUT SWEET: MORDBRAND – “UNMAKE”

Imagine this:

Massed armies of the night stacked in ranks under a blood red moon, their veins surging with adrenaline, teeth bared, straining at the leash.

Before them lies a wasted no man’s land, stripped of life, muddied by lakes of blood and stinking with the decay of putrescent corpses from the carnage of previous nights.

Their master barks the word for which they wait and they bolt forward as one, the stillness broken by the cacophony of their headlong race. A thousand growls erupt from their throats, the ground pounds with the weight of their charge. Bloodied mud spatters and scatters, bones crunch beneath their scampering feet, they find their rhythm amongst the flesh of the unburied.

Their foes cower and cringe in the rapidly closing distance, they wail in anticipation of the utter destruction advancing upon them. They turn, they run, but not fast enough.

A thousand slavering beasts run them down. A bloodlust rages, no quarter given, no remorse. The victims are unmade — ripped, slashed, dismembered, dissected, pounded into the muck. The suffering is epic . . . and then the feasting begins.

And those are the images that ran through my head listening to the new EP by Mordbrand, Unmake. It’s yet another riveting offering of old-school Swedish death metal by a band who have yet to disappoint.

The new collection of three original songs and a cover of Exciter’s “War Is Hell” from 1984 follows on the heels of Mordbrand’s killing Necropsychotic EP from 2011 (reviewed here), the equally destructive No Life split with Bombs of Hades (featured here), and last year’s hell-ripping Kolumbarian EP (reviewed at this location).

Per Boder (ex-God Macabre) has never sounded better, his ravenous vocals echoing with monstrous vitality, and his band mates Björn Larsson (guitars, bass) and Johan Rudberg (drums) sound like their souls have been united in death with the shades of Nihilist, Autopsy, and Discharge.

In my humble opinion, this is the best Mordbrand work yet. The tone and atmosphere are authentic, the spirit is thoroughly mortifying, and every one of these grisly, invigorating tracks is shot through with barbed melodic hooks and compulsive rhythms that will make you return to this sonic crypt for repeated slaughterings.

Kudos are also due to the masterful Juanjo Castellano Rosado for his deliciously grim cover art.

Unmake will be released on CD and vinyl by Doomentia Records in April. Further info is available via the links below. The opening track, “Spew Forth Anti-Life”, is now streaming on Doomentia’s Bandcamp, and you can (and should) listen to that after the links.

http://mordbrand.bandcamp.com
http://doomentiarecords.bandcamp.com
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Mordbrand/121721747901195
http://www.doomentia.com