Italian metal is different.
I don’t know how else to explain it, but whatever is going on over there isn’t happening anywhere else in the world. It’s not better or worse. Italian metal just has different aesthetic concerns and that’s what makes it so much fun if you’re not one of these purists with a broomstick up their asses. No one exemplifies the pure oddity and originality of Italian metal better than black metal weirdos Mortuary Drape, purveyors of hilarious band photos and raunchy audio grimness since 1986. These guys have a new record out called Black Mirror and it doesn’t sound like anything you’ve heard from them before or from anyone else for all that matters. It’s pretty wild.
Black Mirror has eleven songs and forty-eight minutes of music to offer and I’d be really lying to you if I said it was of a precise genre. Blackened thrash, maybe? But with Matthias from Scorpions playing guitar. The first thing that jumps out on the first song Restless Death is the bass. I have never in my life heard a metal record where the bass was so fucking loud in the mix. It’s as if the producer kidnapped Steve Harris and Victor Wooten and forced them to play bass into a closet until one of them submitted to the other. It sounds both ridiculous and authoritative. It’s a nice counterbalance to the guitar tone, which is super duper clear. It’s distorted, but not mucky. It’s sometimes melodic, sometimes galloping like in a thrash metal song. There’s an atmospheric bridge and a brutal ending. It’s not bad or anything, but I never heard anything like this in my life and it took me a couple spins before taking it all in.
The follow-up The Secret Lost is another squeaky-clean, more straightforward blackened thrash number where the bass is overwhelmingly loud and commanding. I quickly got a sense listening to Black Mirror that guitars were going to be a lot less prevalent on this record than they are on any conventional metal record. They have their moments, but The Secret Lost is about pace and rhythm more than it is about conventional riffing. These guys obviously don’t fucking care if you can’t hum any of their songs. Ritual Unction is another pummeling anachronism where the guitar follows the rhythm section and not the opposite. It stands out from its predecessors with its cool mid-tempo grooves and original, expansive drum fills. Black Mirror isn’t a record that features much textures, but songs like Ritual Unction are so odd and anticonformist that it makes up for what it lacks by giving what no else offers.
It’s not before Drowned in Silence that Mortuary Drape lead a song with a killer guitar riff and what a fucking riff it is. This is some catchy, cursed stuff that could’ve been written by Dave Mustaine, were he under the influence of pharmaceutical grade psychedelic drugs. It’s some serious thrashy, infectious boogeyman music, something Italian metal always excelled at. If you have only one song to listen to make up your mind on Mortuary Drape, make it Drowned in Silence. It’s the soundtrack of getting chased down a dark alley by a killer in a Dario Argento movie. Into The Oblivion starts with a clean guitar riff reminiscent of Nirvana’s classic song Come As You Are (I TOLD YOU THIS ALBUM WAS WEIRD) before transitioning into some more bass heavy galloping thrash with fun mid-tempo grooves. Mortuary Drape are definitely operating from inside their comfort zone on Black Mirror, but they never draw outside the lines.
Have I stressed enough how off-puttingly clean the production is? That thing sounds like it could’ve been produced by Chris Donaldson if he had been ordered to record a Running Wild album. But I think even him would be shocked to hear a black metal band sound like this.
I mean, there is no tremolo picking going on here, so far. Zilch. Not that I complain, but it’s odd!
The single Rattle Breath features again some bone-rattlingly loud bass, anachronistic guitars and one of Wildness Perversion’s best vocal performances where he drops the straightforward shrieking for a more theatrical approach. His clean vocals really layer the song and give it a breadth and a dramatic depth that other songs on this record don’t have. Nocturnal Coven offers more of that straightforward blackened thrash with interesting clean guitar riffs that honestly should’ve taken more place in the song. Usually with Mortuary Drape, the weirder they get, the better. But Black Mirror is a precise record. It’s not really sloppy and excessive like most old school black metal. In fact, it has little to do with what the band used to be. Unpleasant? No. Unexpected and destabilizing? You bet your ass. It’s like your fun, drunken party friend getting an office job and rocking it.
Mistress of Sorcerer is a melodramatic number with guitar riffs that belong to 1992. I would’ve loved the song to be atmospheric all the way though, but it eventually kicks into gear and offers one of the most straightforward songs on Black Mirror. Although it has cool ideas, I could’ve done without this song on the record. These old, heavy metal riffs are fun. I would’ve loved them to play around more with it. The Unburied has more of the same grim Kreator WITH A LOT OF BASS going. It’s one of the heaviest songs on the record, though. I’ll give it that. The guitar tone and overall production is thicker and the vocal performance is quite commanding. It’s not a beacon of originality, but it’s one of the best executed songs on Black Mirror.
Fading Flowers Spell starts with another thick, blaring bass line and droney guitar riffs that set another great horror movie atmosphere. Although it eventually picks things up and transitions into being another variation on the same theme, it lingered for an appropriately long time in its odd nature. There’s some tremolo picking on there (and briefly on one or two songs), but Fading Flowers Spell is a weird Frankenstein monster of ideas and I mean this in the best possible way. It has moments of commanding intensity, weird throwbacks, atmospheric spells, it’s FUN. Black Mirror ends with its title song, which is also the shortest on the record. It’s weird because for the first time in the listening experience, you can hear a little bit of a grittier guitar tone in the intro. It’s the only downtempo song on the record, which I would qualify of… fuck, melodic doom? It’s not exactly that, but it’s the most Mortuary Drape song on the record? It’s filthy, it’s dramatic. It matches what I remembered from the band, which I hadn’t listened to since Secret Sudaria.
*
I don’t know what to think of Black Mirror, to be honest. If I’d gone blind and you’d told me it’s from another band, I would’ve believed you. It’s so different from what I know and remember from them. It’s a little monolithic at times and the squeaky clean production is pretty unforgiving in that regard, but the guys did what they wanted to do, I suppose. That’s the thing about Italian metal guys, they don’t give a fuck about what you want to hear They just play what they feel like and what they felt like playing is metal where bass and guitar were equally loud in the mix. Do I think “Mortuary Drape Does Kreator” was a good idea? I don’t have much of an opinion about it, but was I entertained? Absolutely. Might be for the wrong reasons, but entertained I was!
If you like what Ben does and want to hear him talk about books and movies too, follow his site Dead End Follies on Instagram.
