Vulgar Way to Die

I must say that when it came to the Philippines, the first band I have heard was the blasphemous, evil thrash band Paganfire. From Paganfire member Nonoy I have found another slew of Filipino thrash acts such as Abattoir, Mongrel Blood, and Revolver666. However, there’s yet another ass kicking thrash act, Dreaded Mortuary.

This band actually performed in one of the previous installments of Osaka’s infamous True Thrash Fest. It was from writing this Asian metal blog that I learned of True Thrash Fest, and from there that I discovered this awesome band. Dreaded Mortuary hail from Quezon City.

This album consists of ten full speed, full intensity tracks lasting for just a little over thirty minutes. Granted, you can guess that a good number of the songs will be pretty short. With such short tracks, the band doesn’t really have much time to slack off with fillers. This is an album for you guys who are looking for something fucking intense! I would compare this to bands like Vio-Lence or Dark Angel (but not quite as evil sounding as the latter).

This band is that the band is female fronted, and this evil mistress who also does bass sounds quite vicious behind the mic as well. I always appreciate a girl who can pull off some intense vocals. There are very few females in the thrash scene (even compared to other genres, in which its already miniscule), but she’s definitely got some intensity. She’s not harsh like Sabina Classen, but she’s got some damn power. I would compare it more to a slightly raspier version of Sean Killian’s vocals. Naturally, lots of Filipinos speak English really well and her pronunciation in the English songs are perfect, but it really got my attention when she started singing in Tagalog in the track “Pag Aklas”. I feel this was great because I sort of honestly started to feel as if I was listening to the same song for a while.

There’s a lot of talent in this band musically. While this band used to be a three-piece, they decided later on to recruit the help of Mark as a second guitarist before releasing their debut album “All Out Killing”. Since then, this band hasn’t had a single lineup change. They play really tight and are extremely skilled musicians. The riffs are intense and relentless, they attack you with maximum velocity in each and every track, sometimes taking a break for more pounding riffs here and there in the appropriate time.

I have written a top 10 of Asia for 2015 in my friend’s website Unite Asia, and this album was regretfully excluded. I blame myself for not having listened to this album sooner. This album is definitely one of Asia’s best last year. Hard to choose a favorite track, possinly it would be “Maximum Speed”, which is exactly as the title entails, just a super high speed strike to your skull.

My Rating: 8.5/10

Originally written for Asia Metalhead - For Metal Archives Reviews