Reviews: Winter Deluge & Exordium Mors

I’ve chosen to review the following two releases together, as they both have several similarities. Both Winter Deluge and Exordium Mors are from the town in which I reside i.e. Auckland, New Zealand; they both play extreme up tempo metal of the blacker variety, but the main reason is because both recordings were done over a year ago and, despite their awesomeness now they have been released, I’ve witnessed both band’s live performances improve vastly since.

Winter Deluge - As The Earth Fades Into Obscurity (CD)

Winter Deluge play aggressive but melodic Black Metal, and ‘As The Earth Fades Into Obscurity’ is a sterling debut effort! My main criticism of this release is that riffs and melodies need to be more prominent either in execution, production or both. There are definitely some incredible riffs, melodies and rhythms in the music but you have to really listen to hear them, as they seem to disappear under an atonal wash. Although as mentioned in the Inquisition live review, it would appear that Winter Deluge have already taken this issue into account and their future music should shine above this. There are however exceptions on ‘As the earth fades...’ though, such as on track 2 ‘Demonic Dweller of Winter Plains’ which is a stand-out tune with its dark, dynamic, evil build up and aggressive riffing, as is the album closer ‘Celestial Renewal’ - final track of awesomeness with its building of multi-layers of tension. ‘The Fragments of Mankind’ piano instrumental demonstrates the song-writing ability and musical talent within Winter Deluge. There is better to come from Winter Deluge, but that shouldn’t stop you tracking this down!

Exordium Mors - Sacrifice, Perish & Demise (Promo CD EP)

Unfortunately this isn’t an official release yet, rather a promo version the band are using to shop to labels. This being the case, you can’t actually obtain this at the moment, but you can check some of it out here:

‘Sacrifice, Perish & Demise’ is high energy, well executed Black Death Thrash featuring incredible “Iron Maiden on speed” melodic dual guitar work from Santi and Black Mortum.
Like a number of recent local heavy releases such as Hereisiarch, Beastwars and soon BulletBelt and Razorwyre, this features the awesome cover artwork Nick Keller (see examples in the above sampler and below).
The three original tunes ‘Sign of Judas Liege’, ‘Ancestors Call’ and ‘Exordium Mors (Pagan Ritual and Sacrifice to Roman Gods)’ are all of equally high strength. It also contains an awesomely well-executed thrash cover of Venom’s ‘Black Metal’. But while Exordium Mors interpretation of Venom is awesome it actually inadvertently serves to highlight the true strength of Exordium Mors’ own material on this release and sounds almost unnecessary; but then EPs are for releasing the sorts of tracks you wouldn’t put on an album. The newer material that I’ve witnessed the band play live is even better! Someone release this now so we can hear the forthcoming full-length album!