Gloria Morti – ‘Lateral Constraint’

Right from the outset, this fourth album from Finnish thrash metal five piece Gloria Morti is a bruising, punishing affair, treading a path between thrash and death metal, with elements of BM thrown in for good measure.

It’s not that the band can’t make up their mind which sub-genre they fit into:  it’s more a case of trying to stay true to their roots (which were very much in thrash a decade ago) while moving on and incorporating the best elements of associated miens – and, at the end of the day, it always has been a very fine line between death metal and thrash.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTbGsswozhY]

There are songs which fit neatly into one style or another (‘Our God Is War’, for example, is pure DM, while ‘Sleep, Kill, Regress,  Follow’ is very firmly in the thrash camp), but by and large the album succeeds in its goal of pushing the boundaries and “thinking outside the box” (the album’s title is a reference to man’s inherent fear to do just that, while ‘Slaves’ is a commentary on the consequences of not daring to do so) by amalgamating the different sounds.

The performances from each of the five band members are suitably impressive and deliver the goods with accomplished aplomb, the songs are well thought out and structured, the album flows along at a goodly rate of knots and keeps the listener interested throughout, and the production is spot-on.

Gloria Morti - Lateral Constraint ArtworkTrack list:

  1. Lex Parsimoniae
  2. The First Act
  3. Our God Is War
  4. Aesthetics Of Self-Hyperbole
  5. Sleep, Kill, Regress,  Follow
  6. Hallucinations
  7. Slaves
  8. Non-Believer
  9. The Divine Is A Fraud
  10. Conclusion

‘Lateral Constraint’ is out now on Cyclone Empire.

Web links:

http://www.gloriamorti.com
http://twitter.com/#!/gloriamorti
http://www.myspace.com/gloriamorti

http://www.cyclone-empire.com

About Mark Ashby

no longer planetmosh staff