Gloria Morti
Eryx

May 2008
Released: 2008, Stay Heavy Records
Rating: 4.0/5
Reviewer: Luxi Lahtinen

Blackened death metal is what rules the world... At least as long as bands like this Finland´s Gloria Morti exists, it surely does.



The band´s 2nd full-lenght opus, ERYX, blows such a hateful manifest of violent and ripping blackened death metal out from the speakers that you one doesn´t necessarily need any excuses to turn his/her crucifix upside down, burn his/her Holy Bible to ashes and rape your dear neighbor´s newborn, white lambs to death. The first song, "Deathstream (Anthologies of Lifestream)", is - in my opinion at least, pure Dark Funeral worship which I personally don´t consider any bad thing for them by any means. Then we get "Until the Wretched Whimper", which is a less chaotic and more controlled and rhythmic tune, giving us to a reason to believe Gloria Morti might just owe a thing or two toward Behemoth´s direction. "Phoenix Caged in Flesh" just adds eve more of that ´Behemoth-ish´ blackened color to the album - and as the album progresses on - song by song, it´s undoubtedly Behemoth´s name that is about to come on your lips, brought along by your spit more often than any other band´s name as a comparison. Psycho´s vocal parts sound exceptionally good as he´s capable of doing both those deep and low death grunts very well and produce disturbed sounding black metal shrieks from somewhere behind his throat ("Synthetic Eden" is even a pretty awesome track to prove Psycho´s true firepower as a vocalist). Also Jenni´s keyboard parts have been done with a good taste; they don´t overrun the album´s vicious and all-crushing atmosphere a bit, but merely give more depth for the songs, which is one of those things that I like on this album a lot, too. The album´s songs overall stick to its listener as easily as a vicious syphilis does to your genitals at the airport´s toilet in Moscow, so can you possibly resist this? Ah, just like I thought so... ;o)