After releasing two demoes, late Eighties death metal band Mortuary decided to call it a day, but they were soon resurrected as Deteriorot, although only lead singer/guitarist Paul Zavaleta is still involved from those early days. They are now back with their fourth full-length album, their first with the line-up of Zavaleta with James Goetz (drums), Travis Meredith (bass), and Arthur Reid (rhythm guitar), and no-one apart from Zavaleta has been in the band more than three years. He is also responsible for all mixing, mastering, engineering, editing, and production, and to my ears he really should have brought someone else in to handle at least some of that as this is where the album really gets let down.
He has a nice death growl, and the drums are nicely high in the mix so we can hear exactly what Goetz is doing which is a real plus as he never rests and instead is all over the place adding dynamics and nuances to the material, but the guitars and bass are often just too far back. This means they come at us like a wall of mud as opposed to with definition, and all the impact is lost. I like death metal as much as the next person, but it has to be far more than instruments being played quickly and death growls – the frustrating thing is that there are times when the production is better, such as on “Deliver Us From Fiction”, but it is still not where it should be if a strong outside producer was utilised. An opportunity missed.
Rating: 6/10
Links:
https://www.facebook.com/Deteriorot/
https://www.xtreemmusic.com/