Keijo Niinimaa has the rare distinction of playing in one of the fastest Finnish metal bands, Rotten Sound, and one of the slowest, Morbid Evils. We’d be curious to see if this translates to his day-to-day life, like, if when he’s in Rotten Sound-mode, Niinimaa is hyper and deranged, and when in Morbid Evils mode, he’s slow-of-foot and brooding. Could be. The catch here is that both bands are nothing alike, sharing only Niinimaa as a commonality. On their second full-length foray Deceases, Morbid Evils dredge up a rather ugly, seething body of true Finnish death-doom.
Now, Finnish death/doom may sometimes employ stabs of melody. Morbid Evils do not. Instead, the band (who is rounded out by drummer Timo Niskala and second guitarist Kalle Karjalainen) get the job done with massive, droning riffs, perhaps pulled right from the clutches of the abyss itself, then battered with what is truly a monstrous guitar tone. And that’s where Morbid Evils succeed: In tone, they are unbeatable, while in execution, the slow-cooked, crawling, staggering “Case I – Murder,” “Case II – Dead Weight” and “Case IV- Tumour” all follow a similar pattern of funeral doom-like marches, no doubt paced through some type of sinister storyline regarding human anatomy.
One of the better “alter ego” projects in recent memory, Morbid Evils provides a level of pure doom often not heard in the wintry realms of Finland. We’re so used to getting bouts of melodic or folk or quasi-commercialized metal from the country that hearing something as utterly cold and forbidding as Morbid Evils is a welcome sight. But never mind that, Deceases is beyond sludge, doom and death. It’s its own living, horrid entity.