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Decayed—Resurrectiónem Mortuórum (1996)
Details
Released on Aphelion Productions in 2007. I think. This release comprises three collections of songs: “Resurrectiónem Mortuórum” (tracks 1–10), “Satanic Rock ‘n’ Roll” (tracks 11 & 12), and “The Lustful Rehearsal – 10th 1994” (tracks 13–21).
Band
- J.M.—Vocals and bass
- J.A.—Guitars and keyboards
- V.J.—Guitars
Tracks
- Into depths
- Darkness falls…
- A realm beyond
- Thy summoning
- Archdemon
- By the candlelight
- City of the horned one
- Fuck your god!
- Countess Bathory (Venom)
- Abyssic windsSatanic Rock ‘n’ Roll
- From blues to black
- One with the godsThe Lustful Rehearsal — 10th 1994
- Insanity reigns supreme
- In lustful mayhem
- Thy summoning
- Blasphemer (Sodom)
- Witching hour (Venom)
- Deep Purple
- Black Sabbath
- Motorhead
- Lethargy
Review
This is one of the few albums in this project that I’ve listened to only once. Once was enough.
In fact it turns out that three tracks was enough before I found myself glancing at the car dashboard, realising that I was only on track number three and I still had another 18 tracks to endure.
You will have gathered by now that I didn’t enjoy this album. Regular readers will, I hope, understand that it’s not simply due to its overtly Satanic lyrical content, after all Ancient VVisdom are one of my favourite recent discoveries). It’s the music and the production that I don’t like. But mostly the music.
The opening track “Into depths” is in my opinion probably the best track on the album. Although, rather prophetically it does predict the quality of the remaining 20 tracks as it’s pretty much all downhill from there on in.
“Into depths” seems to set the pattern for most of the remaining tracks: open with a tacky, spooky-sounding keyboards intro, rattle a bag of cutlery for the remainder of the song while barking incomprehensible lyrics and thrashing out a couple of power chords to create an aural soup of, in the words of my mum, “just a lot of noise and shouting”.
Apart from the mild variation in intros pretty much every track sounds the same. Evidently the drummer seems to know only one way of shaking a bag of cutlery.
Things slow down a little with “By the candle light”, which in effect simply becomes a standalone 3′ 26″ intro to the second half of the album. It comprises a mix of keyboard padding, cymbal crashing and some actual singing.
“City of the horned one” is actually not too bad, all things considered. I’m just not sure that there are enough ideas in it to last 5′ 24″.
But that’s your interlude over, it’s then back to shouting, over-distorted guitars and a cloth bag filled with knives, forks and a spoon.
The album has a similar feel, production-wise, to Slayer’s debut album Show No Mercy (1983) — it’s really rather poor and for much of the album feels as though it was recorded from the dungeon next to the one in which the band were punishing their instruments. In places Decayed employ the same ‘demonic’-sounding vocal effect that Slayer used to announce “Hell awaits” on their second album. But that’s really where the comparison ends.
This reissue — really?! they reissued this?! — also contains a couple of extras that I expect will excite only die-hard fans. The first is a couple of extra tracks (including a blues-style track reminiscent of the middle section in “Butt fuck (you figure it out)” by Nuclear Assault from The Plague EP (1986)) recorded in which Decayed describes as “a blasphemy” (nice!) and the second is a recording of the band jamming various cover tunes while rehearsing. It sounds like… well, a mediocre band jamming various cover tunes while rehearsing. I’ve been in enough of those to recognise it straight away.
This latter inclusion really doesn’t add anything to the album, and if anything I feel it devalues anything decent that may have been gleaned from the original album which, incidentally, ends with an enormous explosion… a quiet keyboards-y passage… and then the same explosion again. It’s not great!
Conclusion
I was surprised when I looked up Decayed on Encylopaedia Metallum just how many albums and EPs the band has released. But like many an author, I sadly suspect it simply means that they haven’t had an unpublished thought. Quality seems to have been sacrificed in favour of quantity.
This could be so much better. There are moments, there are some good ideas but it’s just not enough. This is probably my equally least-favourite album so far. Sorry.
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