Pray for the Dead

This last studio EP from the American band Mournblade was a better production than the last two EPs released. I was never a big fan of thrash style metal like these guys, but the tracks had merit to them as they was arranged in it's limited musical abilities of the trio of musicians that played on it.

After giving a play though I actually find myself kind of enjoying some of the guitar riffs, Rick Auschwitz, the band's guitarist is the best musician of this group. besides the lame hard sounding last name, he can actually play well with quick chords and changes of tempo with a slightly down tuned D. The break down of his tracks is very well done, and claims of the band that the track "Hades" was actually recorded on a demo tape from 1987's "Vanishing Tower" released by a local label called Shroud Records. The "'Pray for the Dead" track was claimed by the lead vocalist and bassist Jeff Blacky to have wrote the lyrics while in Iraq with the Army, while the track itself was decent the lyrics was very basic to the kind of violence or war that was made popular in the 80's to the early 90's with Sodom and Viking leading the way for such lyrics you might find in Persecution Mania or Agent Orange LPs.

The Machines of War track was a decent with very catchy double bass as you might find in thrash metal bands of today, the bass was well done and hard to follow if you tried to play it off the EP. The guitar was first rate and very hard hitting power chords. The lyrics was pretty good that reminds me of Viovod's Killing Technology LP. The album cover has the famous Highway of Death from the first Gulf War with inserts of the band's line up. Calab Bingham from Athanasia did all the drums and engineering on this release.

Giving to it's 3 track EP and it's limited release, this was hard to find that less than 300 was printed. It is a big step forward to making better songs later on new releases , the band needs a stable line up for drummers and Jeff Blacky should stay in the back by the drum set and just play his bass while the band needs a better vocalist.