Christian Death Metal.<\/p>\n
Man, those are three words I never thought I’d use next to each
\nother. But why should anyone be surprised that in the genre of
\nheavy-hitting metal there would be a more religious form of the
\nmusic – well, religious past the point of glorifying Satan and
\nmurder?<\/p>\n
Australia’s Mortification could well be the leader in their
\ngenre, as their 1999 disc
\nHammer Of God<\/i> shows. The band – bassist\/vocalist Steve Rowe,
\nguitarist Lincoln Bowen and drummer Keith Bannister – occasionally
\nget a little too preachy or they stretch concepts a little too far,
\nbut this disc is more enjoyable than some people would tend to
\nbelieve.<\/p>\n
Some people might not like the idea of being preached to while
\nlistening to a good ol’ fashioned headbanging disc. Fine – block
\nout the message. It’s surprisingly easy to do; I’ve had lots of
\npractice with all the demonic metal I’ve listened to in this gig.
\nOkay, so now we’re going against the aim of the band, so to be fair
\nto them, keep an open mind about both the album and the
\nmessage.<\/p>\n
It would be far too easy for some skeptics to write this disc
\noff as merely religious zealotry. But there’s more to the story
\nthan that; Rowe uses this disc as a celebration of a victory over
\ncancer (which he refers to in songs like “Visited By An Angel”), so
\nexcuse him if he’s in the mood to praise God. He’s actually got a
\ngood right to.<\/p>\n
To Mortification’s credit, they often do keep the religious
\nmessages in check; a song like “Martyrs” could have easily come
\nfrom any band who writes music to make the listener think. And if
\nyou didn’t know the personal beliefs of the band members, you would
\nalmost accept a song like “In The Woods” coming from the pens of
\nany of a gaggle of death metal bands out there. Even the inclusion
\nof keyboards on a song like “The Pearl” just seems right.<\/p>\n
Yet there are times when
\nHammer Of God<\/i> gets a little too preachy – or believable.
\n“Liberal Mediocrity” is one example (“Rightly divide The Word Of
\nTruth \/ understand Scripture and its use”) where the less said, the
\nbetter off the band would have been. Other songs like “God Rulz”
\nare just throw-aways. And then there’s the laugher, “D.W.A.M.” – an
\nacronym for “Daniel was a mosher”. Okay, sidebar with myself for a
\nsecond… gotta remember who my audience for this review is going
\nto be… gotta watch the language… okay, let’s try this. Give me
\na friggin’ break. This song is stretching it so far, you can see
\nthings starting to snap from the pressure.<\/p>\n
One has to question whether
\nHammer Of God<\/i> really needed six bonus tracks tacked on,
\nincluding an “instrumental” version of “Metal Crusade” (which still
\nfeatures one or two vocal lines… hello, instrumental means no
\nvocals!). But there are one or two gems in this mix, including “At
\nWar With War” (though even this track starts to get too preachy
\ntowards the end).<\/p>\n
I don’t like religious music in general, and I really wanted to
\nhate
\nHammer Of God<\/i>. But musically, this is a very sound effort,
\nand Rowe and company prove themselves to be great songwriters and
\nmusicians. As for the message – well, I was brought up in a
\nCatholic household, so it’s not like this is all foreign news to
\nme. Mortification seems to only occasionally stray past the limits
\nof preaching in their music – and it’s the restraint they show in
\ngeneral that works to their advantage.<\/p>\n
\nHammer Of God<\/i> is worth checking out, even if you listen to
\nit only for the musical content and block the rest out. But who
\nknows? Someone might hear something in the lyrics and start
\nthinking about things. And in the end, I think that’s what
\nMortification’s goal really is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25487,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6372],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-36693","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-mortification","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36693"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=36693"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=36693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}