Mortebound — It is a future, it is pointless (2020)

Mortebound is probably the first Ukrainian mathcore release for the whole 2020, but it’s worth listening not only because of this. 

It is an interesting time we live in: on the one hand, almost all concerts are delayed and cancelled, artists have no place to perform, clubs and festivals’ organizations are closing,
and on the other hand, musicians have a great opportunity to get out everything that was stored in a dark box titled "unused demos\will finish this when the time comes" and begin to work on the material recording. After all, what is needed for release issuing nowadays? Just a few clicks and in a week your friends are listening to the album via their iPhones on their way to work.

However, not everyone can appropriately build creative process in such conditions. Luckily, that’s not about Ivan Vyzhletsov and his new project Mortebound. According to his words, he had to come to this sooner or later — to start doing something on his own, independently. Of course, it’s not about multi-instrumentalism and recording literally everything by himself. But with support of his comrade Dmytro Polyakov this release, albeit the short one, was recorded.

Since the very first listening you immediately understand that Ivan from Mortebound returns with the title of local mathcore King (considering that there are almost no active bands of this genre left, then there are none to claim that) and makes a loud statement. Here is everything what we love mathcore for — chaos, energy and insanity, even with a little ТОЛ (ed. – Ukrainian nu metal band) seasoning if we talk about the ending of "It is pointless" track.

If we take a look at details, then the release opens from a different point of view. While getting acquainted with the lyrics, they leave you with the non-rainbow emotions — this is how middle age crisis overtakes you. Being more than 30 years old, you begin to realize that the biggest part of your life had passed in vain, and all that you could be proud of a year ago or more is absolutely worthless, so it would be better to forget it all like a nightmare. Can we tell that material conveys all these emotions? At first - not at all, but after 5, 10, 20 listenings you perceive everything completely different.

However, when listened to this release for more than once, an association with certain bands appears, from which some moments could be borrowed. For example, first track "It is a future" was written as if under the influence of the legendary The Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza, especially if you take the second album as an example, and one of the main hits of their third album "Yippie-kay-yay-motherfucker". I would not say that is very bad, but the style and some parts call out the extremely similar associations like from the first seconds.

For sure, what Ivan does is great and his wish to create such difficult music by himself solely bribes. Nevertheless, to release that short material (two full-fledged tracks and one interlude with text declaiming, hello to Doomeye project) is not serious, and something bigger would be more preferable. We’ll keep believing that his next release, working on which is already underway, will be at least longer. However, ambitions for the future are already present, and even if Mortebound will remain a studio band, there are all chances that it will be carved in the hall of Motherland mathcore fame forever.

The opinions expressed in the reviews convey the views of the authors themselves and do not necessarily reflect the position of Neformat.com.ua

Mortebound is a mathcore/chaotic hardcore project of Ivan Vyzhletsov, a musician from Odesa, who is also a member of Doomeye and Focusrights. This project was founded in 2020. The discography consists of one mini-album.

Mortebound in social networks:

https://mortebound.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/mortebound