Review by Daniel for Mortal Sin - Face of Despair (1989)

Sydney thrash legends Mortal Sin were very much the hometown heroes when I was first being initiated into the extreme metal scene in the very late 1980’s & early 1990’s. I’d become aware of them through the title track from their highly regarded 1987 debut album “Mayhemic Destruction” which was one of the standout tracks on the cover CD from the first edition of seminal Australian metal magazine “Hot Metal” & it very quickly saw me hunting down dubbed cassette versions of Mortal Sin’s full-length albums which were picked up from older kids at my school. I recall finding both “Mayhemic Destruction” & their 1989 sophomore effort “Face of Despair” to be enjoyable listens but neither would have the sort of impact I would see them having on my peers in the local scene over the coming years. It would be Mortal Sin’s live presence that would have me placing them on a pedestal as one of the earlier sources of inspiration for me wanting to become a metal musician. Nothing much had changed when I looked back on “Mayhemic Destruction” recently but it’s about time I revisited “Face of Despair” to see how it compares.

“Mayhemic Destruction” was very much an example of “Kill ‘Em All” worship with it’s simple NWOBHM-infused thrash sounding a touch dated even by 1987. “Face of Despair” presents a very confident band that ooze of professionalism & have clearly honed their craft over the two years since the debut. The clear production & super-tight performances are very impressive with the lead guitar work being particularly effective. Front man Mat Maurer still sounds a lot like Metallica’s James Hetfield but it’s the instrumentation that’s the focal point here with the band opting for a mid-paced chug more often than all-out velocity. That in itself isn’t a negative as there are plenty of great mid-paced thrash albums out there but I do think the album feels a little lethargic at times & would have preferred a touch more energy. It just seems like the mid-paced material is less inspired than the faster parts which see the guitarists showing exceptional right-hand precision & offer a similar sound to early Testament.

The tracklisting begins very strongly with opening cut “I Am Immortal” going on to become one of the great metal anthems of the Sydney scene but I’d have to wait until quite late in the album to see proceedings reaching the same sort of heights again through my favourite track on the album “Terminal Reward” (which includes an incredible bridge & solo section). A lot of the other material is more than serviceable but fails to grab you by the balls like top tier thrash releases tend to do which is mainly due to a general lack of intensity. If you’re going to keep things a little more chuggy then it’s essential that the song-writing is top notch in order to compete with the big boys but I don’t feel that Mortal Sin often compete at the elite level, instead tending to stay amongst the also-rans for the most part. There are a couple of weak tracks included that ensure that “Face of Despair” stays there too with “Martyrs of Eternity” & the terrible novelty closer “Robbie Soles” leaving me cold.

I may not enjoy “Face of Despair” quite as much as I do the youthful exuberance of “Mayhemic Destruction” but it’s far from a poor effort & there’s actually not all that much between the two. “Face of Despair” is a more than decent sophomore album but I do find it hard to see where the unanimous praise that the rest of the Sydney scene heaps on the early Mortal Sin albums comes from to be honest. This is a working-class thrash record from a band that clearly knows what they’re doing but it fails to dazzle me enough to see me coming back to it regularly & that kinda sums up my feelings on the early Australian metal scene overall. I think we had a tendency to overrate our home-town heroes in the late 1980’s given that we were so far away from the rest of the world & were rarely impacted by big name tours in a pre-internet world.