DEADLANDS

On their third alum, Madder Mortem continue the changed style of the second album, presenting a good balance between doom heavy melodies, adventurous song structures, groove and an overall powerful sound that is even better then the previous album.

Madder Mortem bring a type of catchy extreme metal, combining crushing dissonance with beautiful melodic vocals. Necropol Lit and Omnivore are two short example of that and serve as an excellent introductions to the band. The music has continued in adventurous and proggy directions, Distance Will Save Us has little to do with metal, the guitars provide texture rather then riffs and a fretless bass takes the lead. One of the strongest and most intense tracks is Silverspine. It's doom rather then Prog but it's definitely more exploratory then pure doom bands like Candlemass or Solitude Aeturnus. Spine-chilling music nevertheless. Jigsaw is the only weaker track, Agnete's voice sounds too strained here. Deadlands and Resonatine offer 15 more minutes of powerful dissonance and frighteningly beautiful melodies culminating in an orgiastic climax.

The 2009 Peaceville reissue added two interesting bonus tracks. Exile is a track that equals the quality of the regular tracks. It alternates soft verses that are somehow reminiscent of Siouxsie's album Peepshow with a big sweeping chorus. Also the remake of Deadlands Revisited is a real bonus, it's not a fan-only demo but a very tasty string arrangement of the original track.

If they bring out their best quality material as on this album, Madder Mortem come up with amazing music. When I made the original draft for this review in 2002 I added Let's hope they will start to enjoy some success with a releases like this, but I'm not quite sure if that happened in the intervening time. They deserve it though, a lot more then the legion of commercial Gathering copy-cats that clutter the female-fronted metal scene. 4.5 stars