What is it that can make death metal catchy? I'm not really sure, but I can tell you As Humanity Fades is exactly that. Catchy death. That's an almost-contradiction in terms. But not really, once you hear the material.
First of all, the production on Morta Skuld's sophomore effort is ultra-pure. I'm not hearing a lot of processing at all. Everything is just given its proper space, recorded very loudly, and put out right where it should be. The performances are perfectly executed, from the drudging guitar lines, to Dave Gregor's pit-bull barking vocal lines. Skuld's philosophy is no-frills. Give the audience everything in its pure, full-throttle form. Don't hide anything. Execute it all precisely. I wouldn't call As Humanity Fades "technical," but I would call it very exacting in its performance. I get the sense that Morta Skuld went into the studio extremely well-prepared, and it shows. There is a mastery of the material on display here.
I really like the layout of the songs on this album. There are a lot of nice riffs here, and they are put together well, shifting deftly, transitioning part to part, like a well-constructed jigsaw puzzle. Witness the several nicely placed parts of Humanity's Lost or the riff-tastic display No World Escapes. There was real thought put into this material - how each passage should shift into the next, how each beat would flow into the next. And the guitar writing is excellent, if a little derivative. I will admit Morta Skuld isn't trail-blazing here. Rather, they are hammer-smashing the ground already tread. They're doing what fans of death love so much; giving people more of what they crave, at a premium level.
What keeps me coming back to this album? It's the riffs. There are a crap-ton of nicely written death riffs on As Humanity Fades, and they all blow the doors off the room. That's what I mean by "catchy" death metal. The tempo Morta Skuld chooses is terrific. They sit right in that pocket of head-banging glory. Very few times, if any, do they choose to blast beat their way through a tune. The compositions are allowed to grind away at a slower tempo than that. It's seriously drudging, pounding material. I'm up for that -- if its done well. Skuld does it very well.
Highlights of the album for me include the opener Unknown Emotions, with its opening build passage, giving way to several great riffs and vocal lines, all speaking on the topic of mental anguish and torment. The aforementioned No World Escapes is also nicely done, opening with a brutal bass riff and exploding into a passage of guitar dissonance, eventually giving way to a top notch groovy-death double-bass passage that is quite memorable and perfectly performed. And sitting on the latter half of the CD, The Sorrow Fields blends interesting bass lines with screeching harmonics and an almost-doom sensibility in the middle of song.
But really, all these tunes follow in the same general vein. In fact, if there is one knock against As Humanity Fades, it would be the fact that all the material sits on the same general plane of existence. This is mid-paced death metal. I wouldn't call it monotonous. Actually Morta Skuld does a nice job of mixing things up. But there definitely isn't a song that rises from the rest in terms of style or substance. It's a great slab of extreme music, but somehow Morta Skuld manages to be a little too safe, a little too well-executed. After 30 minutes of it, the music does tend to blend together a bit.
Still, in all I really enjoy this. It's home-grown, being from Wisconsin rather than the well-known haven of death metal, Florida. Yet it is quite professionally put together. There's no garage-band antics happening here, when there is every reason to expect it. These guys were up to the task. Morta Skuld didn't open any new doors. But they sure as heck blew open the doors that were already known. And if you love your death deliciously grinding and plodding, you're going to love Morta Skuld's As Humanity Fades. It might be difficult to track down the CD at this point, so if you see it on some used rack somewhere, grab it.
Sample: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
