Mordant - Black Evil Master (2011)

   Mordant's returning full-lenght album couldn't disappoint the fans of '80s metal nostalgia, since the same primitive, lyrically immature sounding blasphemous, old school trueness came back by "Black Evil Master", that proved to be a cultic concept even nowadays. 
   There are a few slight differencerences to find compared to "Memento Mori", and the most spectacular is probably the excellent sound quality. It might be difficult to decide, which sound might suit better to the old school blackened thrashing blasphemy: the dirtier rehearsal-like sound, that recalls the ancient sound of early Venom and Hellhammer, or the clear sound of "Black Evil Master", that could be compared to how the biggest NWOBHM bands sounded like in the '80s. Both seems fitting to the concept and it's up to the listener to decide. The other thing is that in themes the band showed some progress, by involving more melodic leads. Therefore the music turned a bit less thrashy in general, and themes are more heavy metal influenced. They seemed to focus more on the effectiveness of the catchy melodies instead of intense hammering. This pushed the music further to the borderline of related genres, since with only a bit little lower intensity and clear singing vocal style "Black Evil Master" could be a decent speed/heavy metal album too. This also fits better to a Swedish old school oriented metal nostalgia wave, that's well known by bands like Witchery or old Paganizer.