Mordacious – Crossroads (Album – Mordacious)
Genre/Influences: EBM, Industrial.
Format: Digital.
Background/Info: The latest Mordacious-album “Crossroads” has been released by the end of 2020. The album comes one year after the cool “It’s Not Over”-opus, which sounded like a new direction for Mordacious, which has been active since 2004.
Content: “Crossroads” already deals with new ideas. This project often repeated itself for years, but “It’s Not Over” appeared to be a kind of sonic ‘make-over’. The new work is exploring a dark side of EBM mixed with Industrial elements. The production of the vocals has never been that ‘clear’. Some cuts are a little harder and even reminding me of some Noisuf-X elements –without the Trance-Industrial approach.
+ + + : Mordacious is clearly exploring new sonic paths and I must say it rather sounds exciting. The songs became more EBM-driven with a melodic aspect on top, which remains one of the artist’s main sound characteristics. My favorite cut is the instrumental “As You Bleed”, which is a hard-pumping cut with irresistible, filtered sound sequences and a little Trance effect in the end. Other attention grabbers can be heard right in the beginning; so there’s the cool opening cut “Dim Your Light” and the pretty comparable “Fall From Grace”, both illustrating the new influences of this work.
– – – : The last track “We Will Rise” sounds like a true challenge for its somewhat cheap dance tune. It’s a rather poorly inspired final for an album, which definitely has more potential.
Conclusion: Mordacious sounds more like Mordacious V.2 and even if I still prefer the previous work “It’s Not Over”, this album is worthy of examination.
Best songs: “As You Bleed”, “Dim Your Light”, “Fall From Grace”, “Harder”.
Rate: (7).
Artist: www.mordacious.com
About Mordacious
Mordacious is a Los Angeles-based project active since 2004. Discogs lists the debut “Deaths Embrace” (2005) and “This Emptiness” (Hypervoxx Recordings, 2006), followed by “Torture Tactics” (Telegrammetry Recordings, 2007), “Necrolust” (2009), “Sinister” (2015, reissued as “Sinister: Harvest” on Infacted Recordings in 2016) and “Bloodletting”, reviewed by Side-Line in 2018 (Discogs).
“Crossroads” follows “It’s Not Over” (2020), which Side-Line also reviewed. Mordacious later released “Witches Of The Zodiac” in September 2022, also covered by Side-Line.
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