Mass Burial – Vomitory, Opus Mortis VIII

The last hurrah for Swedish death metal other guys Vomitory, Opus Mortis VIII, their eighth album if you didn’t know, was released in 2011. Apparently, the band had known ahead of time that this would be their last work, so a fair question winds up being whether or not they were going to leave anything undone in their careers: would this album be more of their standard, or would we see some new ideas since, with the band ending, the risk of alienating listeners would be pretty low.

The answer is the former: Opus Mortis VIII is another quality record, but one that does a few things that the others didn’t. I guess you could call this album more adventurous, encompassing more elements in some of the songs that previous albums never did.

“They Will Burn” has that garbled, growly kind of spoken word that makes me think of Nevermore, because they do that from time to time. A great intro opens “Hate in a Time of War” mid-album, and then turns into the groovy riff that runs the length of the slower song. “Shrouded in Darkness” is the catchy, slow jam that, about halfway through, presents a classic 90’s death metal riff of the more atmospheric, sinister nature that bands like Autopsy and Death were so skillful at writing. “Combat Psychosis” feels an awful lot like a Bolt Thrower song. “Requiem for the Fallen” rounds out the album in excellent form, a good, thrashy song from start to finish, ending the album with a brusque ‘This is where your life ends’ and a few final stabs at instruments, and while this is a pretty good analogy, I think it unfair to compare the bands in it: sort of the way Emperor’s finale Prometheus ended with that command ‘After I am gone, lay thorns on my grave’. Overall the production is clean and powerful, giving all the songs a real sense of life.

I find this album a lot more interesting than Carnage Euphoria, but again, I can’t say anything bad about that album. I first heard Opus Mortis VIII on the treadmill at the gym, and it kept me moving and interested. I know that that’s an unscientific metric as well, but what can I say?

Overall, Vomitory’s discography is filled with good music and good albums, top to bottom. I was postulating a little while ago about what may have kept the band from getting their due. If you are a death metal fan, you likely have several bands that fit the Vomitory mold that I’ve laid out several times over the course of this series. I think the best way I can describe the band, or any band of this type, is to use a statement that someone I used to know once made: this is the kind of band that, if your threw them on at a get-together of people who like this type of music, would be fine in the background; and if you are a fan of this type of music, this is a band that you’d never mind hearing but not one that would ever make you sit up and pay close attention.

I think that’s very, very true. A totally solid band. A band that couldn’t have a Greatest Hits album not for lack of quality or hits, but because their ‘best’ songs are just the ones you remember a little more than the others, and not for any measurable quality. Vomitory is, and has been from Raped in Their Own Blood to Opus Mortis VIII,  a full record band, one that cannot abide skipped tracks or one or two songs that get replayed more than the others.