Burly death metal isn’t something we’ve heard from Florida for a long time now, but that’s gonna change with Hialeah’s Hibernus Mortis. Not that the South Floridians are new. They originally formed in 1999, but are only in recent memory putting on the death metal hurt. Actually, that’s no true. Debut album, The Existing Realms of Perpetual Sorrow, hit 20 years ago via self-release. Emanations of Incantation, old-school Hypocrisy (the Penetralia type), and older-school Grave (You’ll Never See… era) have been incorporated into Hibernus Mortis’ sun-stroked death metal. This is “tank death metal” without an ounce of forgiveness.
Hibernus Mortis are presently: Cesar Placeres (drums, vocals), Ralf Varela (vocals, guitars), Randy Piro (guitars; ex-Gigan, ex-Hate Eternal), and Yasser Morales (bass). The fearsome foursome are on the eve of a comeback, with their sophomore effort, The Monoliths of Cursed Slumber, haunting from funerals via Blood Harvest. Certainly, if the death metal doesn’t get you, the group’s Demilich-length song titles will. The album’s outro, “Vestigial Currents That Transcend the Ether of Tenebrous Unconsciousness Embedded Deep Within the Smoldering Embers of Sempiternal Dusk (Outro),” might be the longest title we’ve seen since Demilich vomited this treatise, “The Planet That Once Used to Absorb Flesh in Order to Achieve Divinity and Immortality (Suffocated to the Flesh That It Desired…)” in 1993.
Say Hibernus Mortis: “This was one of the final songs we wrote for the new album. During the recording process, Randy was recording his guitar parts in the studio and came up with a cool eerie harmony for one of the riffs halfway through the song right on the spot. That harmony added an even deeper and darker element to that track. That specific part was created literally 5 minutes before the final take that ended up being on the album. ‘Enshrined In Spiritual Atrophy’ is a great example of how all of us in the band are on the same wavelength since it contains riffs written by three out of the four members. Lyrically, this song deals with a collector of souls, where their spirits are trapped halfway between this world and the spirit realm. Normally, we like to write lyrics which are vague and open to interpretation by the listener. But in this case this song is loosely based on a classic movie from 1979, which if you read the lyrics, it’s pretty obvious which one. I’ll just leave it at that.”
Decibel and Blood Harvest teamed up to premiere Hibernus Mortis’, “Enshrined In Spiritual Atrophy,” a back-of-album bruiser that reminds of death metal pre-lululemon. And that’s a good thing, brothers and sisters.
