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Morticians is a vintage Swedish EBM act that got together in 1991 when Andreas Rimheden (brother of electronica artist Sophie Rimheden) started making dark and harsh industrial music with Stefan Thor. It was all about demos and gigs in the early days, because their first proper album didn’t come out until 2001, but it was widely praised when it arrived. Nowadays Andreas' cousin Jonas is in the band instead of Stefan, and they're working on new material right now. But the time has come to re-release some of their old material, remastered and compiled by Plutonium Distribution, together with a second disc of remixes and covers of Mortician tracks by other artists. The first disc sounds a bit rough compared to the music of today, but I think their talent for making catchy melodies and infusing every song with a lot of kinetic energy makes up for it. And a lot of current bands sound exactly like this anyway… Disc two is a very interesting thing to behold indeed. It's filled with covers and remixes by the likes of Sophie Rimheden – who makes a fantastic version of “Blood Desire” – Project-X (dark and brooding mix of “Zombie Centerfold”), The Pain Machinery (noisy and great) and actually an intriguing acoustic rendition of “MePsychopath” by my namesake Johan Karlsson (no relation there). And the weirdly named Krakilöki makes a wonderful, blippy version of "Animal Sex". This is a splendid introduction to the band, and if you like danceable, dark and hard industrial EBM, this is something for you. JOHAN CARLSSON |
