Mortalicum
Progress of Doom

July 2010
Released: 2010, Metal on Metal Records
Rating: 4.0/5
Reviewer: Luxi Lahtinen

There´s never enough traditional doom metal out there, is there? Mortalicum from Sundsvall, Sweden, whose 10-track debut album titled PROGRESS OF DOOM on Italian Metal on Metal Records, is basically that; pure, straight rockin´ and nicely jammin´ doom rock/metal that clearly gives a fair nod musically toward bands like Black Sabbath (oooh... really, HA!), Trouble, Saint Vitus, The Obsessed, Count Raven, Spiritual Beggars, Candlemass and many similar bands of the aforementioned ink. Music-wise, Mortalicum is easily adopted doom that certainly sticks to one´s ears indelibly like old gum does to your expensive and fancy trousers from a chair of public library.



Mortalicum neither adds nor paints new colours to a rich traditional doom metal pallette, but they do use the existing and known colours powerfully and very effectively. I would say this is the right way to get their colours beautifully painted into the vast horizon. Both a 70´s and 80´s warm vibe and feeling shines in a massive way through the band´s strongly organic, heavy and crispy sound, making it nearly impossible to resist their deeply emotionally charged, moody, and soul-filled triumphs of doom. The beauty of their stuff is that nothing sounds wrong or fake in them; there´s so much soul and heart put into this stuff that one simply cannot feel anything but cherishing their songs at least a little bit because they are so fully loaded with sheer sweetness and brilliance and jolly good sounds of pure rockin´ doom that never goes out of fashion. They have an excellent singer, a mountain of good and catchy riffs, beautifully yet crushingly jamming bass lines, hippie-styled retro-ish solos, heap-loads of attitude and so much dynamics that the playing overall seems to be so easy for these Swedish fellows. The band rocks with 100% capacity for the 48-minutes that this CD lasts.



I can only sincerely suggest all of you head your ways to your local record stores or retailers to ask whether this excellently rockin´ traditional doom metal CD can be found from their catalogue of ´recommended-CDs-for-sale´. If you can come across a copy of this, then buy/or steal it immediately. Did you hear me, folks?