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

"Deadlands" is the 3rd full-length studio album by Norwegian metal act Madder Mortem. The album was released through Century Media Records in October 2002. It´s the successor to "All Flesh Is Grass" from 2001 and features the same quintet lineup who recorded the predecessor.

Stylistically the material on "Deadlands" is hard to put a label on. It´s female led metal, but it´s not symphonic metal or goth metal, but rather a heavy and dark type of metal with Agnete M. Kirkevaag´s distinct sounding and powerful vocals in front. She is sometimes backed by very low in the mix semi-growling vocals and often by harmony vocals too. The tracks are predominantly riff heavy, but there are more melodic and less distorted and loud tracks on the album too. Madder Mortem are often labelled progressive metal, but other than a few adventurous ideas here and there, I wouldn´t call the music on "Deadlands" particularly progressive in nature ("Distance Will Save Us" is probably the closest Madder Mortem come to playing progressive metal). This is just gloomy and really heavy music, and maybe groove heavy doom metal is a better description.

"Deadlands" is not only well performed it´s also well produced, featuring a sound production which is both powerful and detailed, and which suits the material well. Upon conclusion "Deadlands" is another solid release by Madder Mortem, which shows their relatively unique sound. A 3.5 star (70%) rating is deserved.

(Originally posted on Metal Music Archives)