“Cadaver Art” is already the third full-length album from Mortal Decay and the second to be released on Unique Leader Records. Having been around since 1991 this New Jersey outfit can be considered veterans to the brutal death metal scene and this release is certainly evidence to that.

”Cadaver Art” offers a mature piece of music with quite a unique style within the U.S death genre. The odd mixture of fast-paced and mid-tempo pieces, guttural vocals over melodic guitars and a lot of solo’s all give these nine tracks (ten if you count the untitled outro) something extra. Just listen to the fourth track “The Ravenous Addiction” and you’ll know what I mean, this song has all the aforementioned elements and is at the same time powerful, coherent and even catchy. The other tracks are by no means of lesser quality and the high level of musicianship is being maintained throughout the whole album. Only the tenth untitled track is breaking away from the rest off the album stylistically by being a slow, brooding almost doomy instrumental piece of music.

At first, I really had to adapt to the somewhat typical production. It’s common in this style of music to have a very rough production with a highly compressed sound but in comparison to that “Cadaver Art” sounds almost clean. Even the bass guitar is clearly audible and not buried under the guitars and a huge distortion.
At the same time this means that it doesn’t grab you by the balls to kick you in the groin. It is only after several listenings that the meat hooks are being placed and the tracks crawl their way up to the brain; only then the music has its real impact. I would almost go as far as saying that this is headphone death metal but cranking up the volume of your cd player might also do the trick.

It has been three years since the release of the predecessor “Forensic” but given the fact that metal fans are loyal as hell and the high quality of “Cadaver Art”, Mortal Decay won’t have any difficulties regaining that built up support and probably will even expand their fan base.