Track Premiere: Morgued – Terror Troops
Courtesy of visual artist Ditch Witch, the album cover for the upcoming full-length Ordnance Obscenum is proof that an eye-catching album cover can do a lot for your music. When this rainbow-vomit portrait of what can only be described as a “future-sludge-trash-alien-soldier awash in flames and goop” slid across my proverbial desk, it piqued my interest and elicited memories of releases like Fetid‘s Steeping Corporeal Mess and Worm‘s Foreverglade.
Yet, while I hear a tiny bit of the doom flavorings of these records, “Terror Troops” conjures mental links closer to the realms of fast paced OSDM with emphasis on energy and melodic leads heard in groups like Undeath and Necrot. On its own merits, this song from Boston death-purveyors Morgued stands as a promisingly fun and satisfying taste of what’s to come on Ordnance.
Coming after the single “Special Planetary Operations,” “Terror Troops” continues to set the stage for a sci-fi story of a “dystopian universe…where themes of war, authoritarianism, and colonial occupation unfold…,” according to written material provided with the former track. It’s “Terror Troops,” with its further exploration on the military forces that carry out these acts of warfare and extraterrestrial colonialism. If “Planetary Operations” was sonically more focused on groove and rhythm, “Terror Troops” locks in on those previously mentioned catchy lead melodies that rip along at a steady pace. It’s headbanger fuel at its most pure, while still carrying a clear influence from hardcore punk and some gang vocals for good measure, almost resembling Splatterthrash-era Ghoul (especially considering the old sci-fi movie/pulp comic theming that is played relatively tongue and cheek).
The band plays as a formidably solid unit; two members coming from weed-based death metal outfit Inhalement, one formally of deathgrinders Scalpel, and one of antifascist black-crust band Stryga. On the topic of this “Terror Troops” single, which we have the honor of introducing to the world, the band had this to say:
“This was one of the first songs that we finished for ‘Ordnance;’ we wanted to lean into our melodic influences in a heavier way than we have in the past. “Terror Troops” sprints out of the gate and oscillates between different rhythms and grooves anchored around a central theme. Listen as frantic melo-death riffing drops into punchy death-grind, then finally melts into a more expansive, head-bobbing harmony section sure to stick in your ears long after you’ve finished.”
It’s that aforementioned harmonic focus that ends up making this song as catchy and enjoyable as it is. Along with the previous single, it sells this upcoming album as a record of “…endless warfare, authoritarian regimes, and exploitation, traversing alien battlefields, poisoned worlds, cybernetic experimentation, and the schemes of megalomaniacal warlords across a dying universe caught in perpetual conflict,” as the presser puts it. I look forward to peppy cuts of death metal fun with such titles as “Cyberphilia,” “Trenchfoot Gourmet,” and “Colonize the Acid World.” The only concern is whether or not I am going to have to be submerged in whatever the fuck substance is on the cover.
Ordnance Obscenum out August 28th on Iron Fortress Records.
