Mercyless - Coloured Funeral

MERCYLESS - Coloured Funeral (CENTURY MEDIA - CD 1993)

Objectively speaking I have to admit that even though French death metal scene never belonged to my favourites, they did have some exceptional and memorable bands. Some of you may still remember Aggressor, Supuration, Loudblast, Crusher… Personally my two beloved bands were Massacra and Mercyless. Oh man, these acts really did record some fantastic albums and ever since the early 90’s they belonged to my favourite European death metal bands. Mercyless is one of those bands, whose music turned into something horrible on third and fourth albums, I truly think they recorded an utter rubbish. But their killer debut “Abject Offerings” and even better follower “Coloured Funeral” are classic death metal records. If you don’t know them, then you just must catch up and grab them, believe me they’re fantastic.

“Coloured Funeral” is close to perfection. This quite forgotten and underrated album brings some of the best technical and slightly progressive, but still harsh sounding death metal songs of all time. I love everything about this full length, starting with killer and exceptional songwriting, filled with AMAZING riffage, many great melodies and just perfectly, technically played performance of every Mercyless member. And finishing with top notch production, which is on that harsh death metal edge, but is yet clean and powerful, so when this album is played loud then everything really turns into ruin and shit.

The album may require few spins, before you’ll fully be able to grasp it. But that’s only due to the enormous number of details, riffs and not so easy or typical song structures. Luckily a lot of the fragments are quite catchy and memorable, what helps and makes the whole experience not only easier, but also more pleasant. I like diversity of this music and how Mercyless combines death metal aggression and viciousness with progressive style of playing. The effect is truly amazing. And even if we can compare this band and “Coloured Funeral” to bands like Pestilence, Death, Burial (Holland), Morgoth or Gorguts, then they still have enough creativity and identity to have their own, unique style and sound. And this is why I consider Mercyless to be such a unique and exceptional act.

As always I mention some standout tracks below, but to be honest, I feel like I could name every song from “Coloured Funeral”, because this is complete and from start to finish a very good album, which has no fillers at all. And as I said, if you dig a bit progressive, but vicious and aggressive old school death metal, then do not waste time and buy first two Mercyless albums. They’re classics! Oh, Mercyless reformed and after reunion they recorded another two pure death metal albums, which I also loved. At the moment this is my favourite death metal from France.

Standout tracks: “Forgotten Fragments”, “Travel Through a Strange Emotion”, “Serenades... (into Your Limbs)”, “Naked Forms”

Final rate: 90/100