Mordial Digital Album

"In case it wasn’t hinted at in the striking geometric artwork, Mordial picks up where Meta left off, Car Bomb in their prime. Topping Meta is an impossible task, and you can tell that this wasn’t something the band were much concerned with accomplishing, as there aren’t many surprises in terms of musical development since Meta; the main attraction is surely Greg Kubaki’s inventive riffs — backed by Jon Modell’s low-end mastery and Elliot Hoffman’s incredible percussion — which are so heavy and weird that they’re at risk of toppling in on themselves. The band have increasingly toyed with an imbued clean vocal presence, with Michael Dafferner’s not-quite soaring vocals invoking Chino Moreno’s atmospheric sense of voice, more often serving as set dressing than a vehicle for melody delivery. Mordial is more of that, and it’s good.

What takes Mordial that extra step, just like any Car Bomb record, are the bizarre and confounding textural and rhythmic choices that are made throughout. Standout moments littering the landscape, like the over-the-top space-laser guitars on “Dissect Yourself,” the tribal percussion and ping-ponging clean guitars of the title track, or the dizzying modulated tempos of “Naked Fuse”, make the record an engaging and unpredictable listening experience, even when things turn back towards the stuttering and lumbering math metal.

It also helps that Mordial is also perhaps the band’s most thrash-influenced record since Centralia. “Eyecide” ups the tempo to trem-picked power chords, and pulls from Contradictions Collapse-era Meshuggah moreso than their later-era works. “Xoxoy” also dips into this arena before things turn to shoegaze in its second half. However, “Blackened Battery,” one of the most fun songs on the album to not involve space lasers, as its name might imply, overtly snatches musical cues from Metallica’s “Blackened” and “Battery.” No joke, its not the least bit subtle, and it’s an incredible homage that perhaps opens the door for the band to explore thrash further as their sound continues to develop.

Chaotic and technical mathcore that shifts between thrash, death metal, and hardcore with whacky guitar acrobatics and an an experimental if not psychotic spirit; everything you’d want out of Car Bomb is here in spades on Mordial. This is an incremental step in the overarching and evolving narrative of Car Bomb, but it further cements their place as one of the most creative, eccentric, and valuable active bands in the modern extreme metal scene."

Heavy Blog Is Heavy September 2019