Morta Skuld - Surface

MORTA SKULD - Surface (REPULSIVE ECHO - LP 2018)

Another excellent vinyl release from Repulsive Echo Records. And another death metal classic in the catalogue of this label; an album, which I personally feel is slightly forgotten, definitely it's underrated. Even I haven't heard it in ages, so it’s a good opportunity to refresh it. And while Morta Skuld is fairly known band, to old schoolers at least, their fourth album "Surface" is often considered as their weakest effort, not as strong as "Dying Remains" and "As Humanity Fades". I can agree with this opinion, I also prefer Morta Skuld demos and earlier albums. But “Surface” is a very good album anyway and it was a great pleasure to listen to it again. 

I suppose the biggest problem maniacs have with this album is that it's less brutal, less traditional old school death metal and instead it's rather groovy, sometimes slightly modern (for the 90's standards of corpse) and quite easily listenable album. It's still fairly aggressive and nasty, you cannot say that Morta Skuld wimped out and started to sound like old, uninspiring farts. They still had plenty of similarities to the likes of Obituary, Benediction, Grave, even Sepultura and such. Their riffage on "Surface" is good, there are some absolutely fantastic moments on the album. Sometimes they experimented a little with some guitar lines, like in "The Anger in Disguise" and that's definitely something what gave an interesting and different result. But most importantly, Morta Skuld didn't forget how does good death metal should sound like. If you take such songs as "The Killing Machines", they are just fuckin killer pieces, crushing with absolutely essential and quality death metal riffs. Tempo wise “Surface” is mainly mid or slow paced, but such "Time Will Never Forget" consists just enough blasting death metal to please every moaner out there. 

So, is there any reason why a death metal maniac should avoid this album? I don’t think so. I like it, I like the fact that there’s such a good vinyl pressing of it available, so I can only recommend you getting it. I believe that soon all copies will be sold and then there will be too late, but this release definitely deserves to be in your collection. 

Verdict: 75/100