Sean McLennan

Just five years into making music together, Olympia, Washington’s Mortiferum have made big waves in the extreme metal underground with their colossal, doom-drenched brand of death metal. On their 2019 Profound Lore debut, Disgorged From Psychotic Depths, Mortiferum demonstrated a deluge of dismal riffage played atop a thundering pulse, all contributing to an enveloping atmosphere of dread and decay.  

Fast forward two years and one crippling pandemic later, Mortiferum are ready to unleash their devastating follow-up, Preserved In Torment, without having had the opportunity to tour on their first record.  

“When the pandemic first began, we were in the middle of a U.S. tour, and it abruptly ended in Mexico City. There was so much fear and uncertainty,” say the band members, collectively. “Obviously we were terrified for humanity, but we couldn’t stop thinking about what it meant for the band.” 

“The touring we had planned for 2020 was all in support of the first album, and it felt truly discouraging to have all of it cancelled when the album felt so new to us,” they continue. “When it became clear that touring wasn’t going to happen anytime soon, we knew the next best thing to do was write another album.” 

With touring out of the picture, the members of Mortiferum searched for further inspiration, practicing their respective instruments, reading, listening to music, and watching movies. Once the band felt comfortable enough meeting together to rehearse, “it was immediately time for writing and arranging.” 

As inspiration fed into creation, “the dread and fear of what felt like mankind’s societal collapse with not only the pandemic, but all the events of that year, definitely fueled strong writing sessions.”  

“We forced ourselves to be creative,” they say.  

Despite the less-than-ideal circumstances, the band feel lucky to have created something as concrete as Preserved In Torment. 

Mortiferum’s hyper-focus on writing certainly paid off, as Preserved In Torment represents six of the band’s most abyssal, intricate, and cohesive songs to date. The album is packed full of memorable riffs, impressive guitar layering, detailed percussion, hard-hitting tempo changes, and one meaty bass tone. 

“In this band, we want every single riff to be memorable,” the band say. “The dreadfulness and decrepitude of doomed death metal is essential, but we also wanted this album to be a bit more intricate in certain ways. But that said, there’s a few parts that are overtly simplistic and dirge-y. We wanted to do a shitload of guitar layering, solos, pinches, and we wanted the drums to be even more pummeling than the last album.” 

This time around, members of Mortiferum acknowledged a wider range of influences to guide their ideas, rather than just the Fin-spiration we’ve come to appreciate from them. “We’ve all made a point to listen to a greater span of death metal and not just hyperfocus on the classic Finnish bands that inspired us to write the demo Altar Of Decay,” the band say.

The band cites “listening to a lot of South American death metal such as Hadez, Headhunter D.C., Mortem. As well as some Polish death metal like Damnation, as well as Oppressor, Vehement Thrower, and Mordor. These bands, from these two very different regions, all have a very unique approach to riffing and arrangement which (offered) a lot of inspiration.”

To Mortiferum, the title of the new album mirrors the perpetual state of agony the world seems to be continuously frozen in.  

“With every passing day, humanity feels more and more on the verge of collapse. The songs are about death, apocalypse, human extinction, contagion, and divine punishment,” they say. 

With so much negativity surrounding the pandemic, the members of Mortiferum refused to let the situation affect their creativity and productivity. The proof is evident in the band’s latest Profound Lore full-length.  

“Preserved in Torment feels like a step forward musically, visually, and creatively,” they say. “Tonally, the production triumphs over anything we’ve done in the past. Compositionally, the songwriting and musicianship is more elaborate, more diverse, and overall, just a bit better. But most of all, it’s a testament to our ambitions as a band, and never giving up on ourselves, despite the world turning to complete shit.” 

 For more from Mortiferum, find them on Bandcamp.