Rancid Cadaver – Mortality Denied | Album Review

Grimy and horrible old school death metal out of Glasgow, no frills no flashy technicalities, just the soundtrack for bodies rising from the grave.

When an album greets you with the dialogue from some old schlocky horror movie you know you’re in for a good time, and Rancid Cadaver bring that in spades. Setting the mood perfectly, leaning into the campy ridiculousness of the voiceover warning of the “maggot infested corpse standing upright..setting its eyes on unspoiled flesh”  only serves to make the eventual release, when the first track proper kicks in, all that tension disapated, all the more satisfying.

Sitting comfortably somewhere between the early ferocity of Carcass and the relentless power of Bolt Thrower, via a big old dollop of Morbid Angel, the Glaswegians show why traditional, old school, death metal in 2025 is still a vital sound.

The guitars full of buzz saw fuzziness, grind through some of the most pit worthy riffs you could come across. Lead lines not to show off technical virtuosity as so often death metal guitarists seem want to do, add texture and depth, supporting the flow of the song, almost  fighting the gruff brutality in the rhythm. That’s exactly what you get from the opening of the title track, chaos, everyone competing for the limelight, it sounds messy in the best way possible, in the way that only death metal truly can. When it settles into into its mid paced, menacing, shambling, groove is when it truly shines. This is what death metal is meant to sound like, the tanked up big brother of thrash, and it doesn’t need to be much more than that, crushing skulls like they were beer cans, on and on like some machine built for war.

As a debut full length release this shows real promise, there’s a fire and a hunger to this band, they’re not going through the motions, they’re trying to carve out something of their own in a genre where it can easy to become repetitive and stale. There is definite conviction in what they are doing which makes it an enjoyable listen. There’s flashes where they just throw out everything and go chaotic where the whole experience becomes an aural nightmare, threatening, menacing, and hungry to devour the listener. Which serves to combine well with the more mechanised, brutality of a tank rolling through a battlefield, that is the more structured elements.

It’s not totally immune from this there are times when this album might feel a bit one dimensional, there’s nothing really in the way of a truly memorable riff, there is a lot of pull off,hammer on chugga-chug-chug breakdowns or some variation thereof. The dialogue and horror film soundscapes whilst potentially silly, added a real sort of B movie atmospheric nastiness, and shade to the record seems to be more or less abandoned about half way through.

If listeners go into this looking for  the second coming of Nile or something, they’re going to be disappointed, it is plain and simply a death metal record, but that’s what makes it good it’s not pretending to be something it isn’t and it does what it sets out to well.