TIMORATUS - The Great Mortality
TIMORATUS is an extreme metal band made up of husband and wife David and Courtney Napier. The band continually experiment with sound, thus each album is different from the last. Their first albums Afraid of the Light and Signs and Places were instrumental pieces in the ambient and dark ambient synth fields. Next, TIMŌRĀTUS released a 4 ep set of different metal genres that when listened to in order (Black, Death, Doom and Grind) told the story of a man named Kefla who lost everything in the time of the Black Plague. Then the band put out a full length album called Reverentia that played with funeral doom, drone, and experimental worship, before collaborating with Weapons of Indignation for a 2 song ep Compass, which mixed doom, drone, and black metal.
The Great Mortality is a collection of rerecorded, remixed and remastered versions of the original 4 metal ep's (Black, Death, Doom, & Grind), all combined to tell one complete concept story line. The brilliance of this album is simply that it answers the number one problem with extreme metal- listener fatigue. Without decipherable vocals, if the music does not change and vary, the listener quickly tires of what he/she is hearing. The style changes about every 4 songs, so if one is not to your liking, maybe the next will be. With that said, the style doesn't change so drastically that it doesn't sound like the same band performing it all. The grind material is probably the strongest, with its speedy guitars and blastbeats, and doom being the least, which was pretty much played out on their last album. Might I suggest throwing some thrash into the mix as well? This is the first time I remember seeing an extreme metal band do a concept album. Great idea, but a little hard to follow along. The lyrics are all there, but the font is a bit hard to read on the inside of the mini-lp digipack. Rock music is cyclical, even in metal circles. Musicians can pigeonhole themselves farther and farther into niches that they make for themselves, so perhaps those willing to experiment are best prepared to survive. (Christian Metal Underground Records) - 3 out of 5 stars
