After some time spent listening to anything else but the good ole death metal, by sheer accident I’ve got introduced to this nice band from the neigbours from the north. Nope, not Scandinavia…closer…we’re talking Poland, kurwa!
The Burial Mounds EP is one of this year’s efforts from these Polish old school death metal maniacs (and a lady maniac, since a lady named Anna joined them at the beginning of the year) Tortured Corpse…and now I digress for a moment.
When I was a teenager buying bootleg tapes at the local market (or during trips to nearby Krosno in Poland – beautiful memories!), one didn’t recognize many bands and their albums. At that time, I was slowly getting into various fanzines, the first magazines dedicated to extreme music started to appear (and disappear), but I was certainly not the only one who bought cassettes (and t-shirts, let’s not forget that) also because of the covers. Helloween was good, but the cover of “Butchered at Birth” by Cannibal Corpse, that was in a completely different league (but I’ve never had it, I have to admit). In that, of course, the more brutal the subject of the t-shirt, the bigger the ego, and we were often good examples of that.
Why am I mentioning this? The same applies to the Burial Mounds EP. Nice, attractive cover, a person clicks (in the case of Youtube) or directly buys (in the case of a physical carrier). This is how marketing is done, people! The packaging simply sells, and that still rings true even today.
And although it sometimes happened that the cover also sold the music, which was worth – to put it politely – shit, fortunately, this is not the case with the Burial Mounds EP.
It contains 4 songs, the last one is the cover of the legendary good-mood inducer from no less legendary American horde – Impetigo. If you’ve guessed “Boneyard”, your guess is correct. I’ve missed that “um-tss-um-tss” in my favourite part though, but it’s a cover, not a copy, so that’s OK.
And 3 original songs offered by Tortured Corpse are beautifully crafted old school death metal in an American vein, a that’s fucking cool. Because this EP appeared straight on the New Year’s Day (i.e. January 1st, 2024), it opens with a welcoming intro of someone’s vomiting, which happens when the party the night before was really wild, you know…however, I might be wrong. 🙂
For fanatics who live US OSDM 24/7, it might be just an another nail in the wall, but for me, with a break from the extreme music, such a portion of honest Polish extreme metal is better than bigos from Pamapol (Polish people understand the comparison). And that’s a fucking good bigos!
Well, long story short, Burial Mounds EP needs to be listened to, and if you like what you hear, support the band buying some merch. And for those who still like to read stuff, here’s the interview with Necro, who’s ruling Tortured Corpse from his place behind the drums: https://rubberaxezine.com/digging-the-burial-mounds-with-tortured-corpse/