Exhorder - Mourn the Southern Skies (2019)^{Release ID: 14805}

Having been impressed enough with their latest offering to write a review to share my largely positive thoughts, I have taken time recently to revisit the short discography of Louisiana's Exhorder. I have been all the way back to the debut (again) and I can report that (again) I am still completely underwhelmed. Likewise, the follow up, The Law has little to get the blood pumping for me. Having completed this revisit I find myself firmly of the opinion that latter day Exhorder is better than 90’s era Exhorder by a long chalk.

Mourn the Southern Skies is better than I remember it being, in fact it is better than Defectum Omnium which achieved a three and a half star rating from me earlier this month upon its release. I will come to the reasons why Mourn the Southern Skies trumps their 20024 offering shortly but for now I want to reflect on why I think Exhorder as a band are better with age.

The first couple of Exhorder albums are not bad per se. They are over-hyped (the debut in particular) but they aren’t without some merit. What they lack by way of comparison to the later output is any real bite. Modern day Exhorder know how to add flair, panache, variety to pace, hooks, and memorability to their songs. The groove element is much stronger than on earlier releases (better production helps also) with the band being less liable to include much in the way of out and out thrash metal nowadays. All too often, my experience of modern groove metal is that it soon sounds disjointed or cumbersome, something which Exhorder do not suffer from despite having line up changes to contend with over the years.

In terms of why I think Mourn the Southern Skies is better than Defectum Omnium, well quite simply put, it is the guitar work that sets the earlier album apart. The lead work on this year’s offering is sub-par at best. Pat O’Brien’s style fails to match the vibrancy of Vinnie LaBella and Marzi Montazeri and the rhythm guitar is not as solid either as it was in 2019. Mourn the Southern Skies is stacked full of riffs that just hack away at your brain (Yesterday’s Bones) that are backed up by richer melodies and leads to apply variety to proceedings. End to end, MtSS is a more energetic record that whilst far from flawless (still too long and guilty of some filler therefore) is thus far my favourite Exhorder release.

These guys have a really good Pantera impression on "Yesterday's Bones", and some of their slower groovy tunes are pretty solid (with the exception of "Hallowed Sound"). But on the tunes when they pick up tempo, like "My Time", "Beware The Wolf" and "Ripping Flesh", it's fairly obvious that these guys have one thrash idea and are going to beat it into the dirt. Fairly solid melodic groove metal, but nothing special.

Exhorder's first new album since '92's The Law isn't as terrible a record as you would think reading the comments on RYM - it's a reasonably serviceable album of medium-paced thrash and groove metal. Now, is that good enough for a band who recorded Slaughter in the Vatican? I would suggest not and as a basis for the backlash against it, I totally get it. There is too much of a hard rock feel to the thrashing for the majority of the album, particularly the title track and the only song that even comes close to the quality of the first two albums is the penultimate track, Ripping Flesh, which, I believe, is possibly an old song anyway.
So, to summarise, it's OK, but I've listened to it a couple of times and will probably never bother again. It can only serve to diminish a (semi-)legendary band's reputation.