Godz Ov War Productions tossed over a newly-formed (and signed) Mexican death metal group with the finely alliterative name of Morbid Messiah for my listening pleasure about a month ago. With a name like In the Name of True Death Metal, complete with a cobwebby mutant human/goat skull on the front, it's pretty easy to tell what kind of music this is going to be.

In that respect, at least, it doesn't disappoint. The style doesn't take much from the technical or rhythm-oriented practitioners of the art, concentrating instead on raw speed and harshness. The gore-drenched and Satan-filled lyrics are completely unrecognizable without the handy lyric sheet, and the production is one step above demo-quality, but the band has enthusiasm for its material, and here and there one sees more branching out than the album starts with, such as on Condemned to Hell Sores, where the sullen guitar riffs die down for a bit for Anubis Sandoval to do a miniature drum solo. Most of that's pretty few and far-between; there's not a whole lot of differentiation between songs, and the band's focus on personifying traditional, unadorned death metal keeps them from trying much that their influences didn't already try, and even the solos are kept simple and brief, as if not to detract from the old-school riffing.

There's promise here, but the band's in their early stages and haven't really evolved anything distinctive of their own yet. As a name-your-price Bandcamp purchase, however, the price is right.

Bandcamp: https://godzovwarproductions.bandcamp.com/album/morbid-messiah-in-the-name-of-true-death-metal.