The Mortals

The Mortals, “Hangin’ On”

The Mortals played garage rock, like a lot of the Estrus Records bands, but with a little bit more of a greasy edge to things. The reverb and sneer on the vocals give things a twist from just playing it straight up.

Steady Ernest, “Promises”

There’s a live-in-studio feel to this tune that suits it well. There’s a presence to the horns, they feel organic, and it works well.

Krallice with Dave Edwardson, “Rank Mankind”

For their seventh album, Krallice brough in Dave Edwardson (Neurosis) to change things up. It’s still very much a Krallice record, with all the dizzying ideas that entails, so Edwardson mostly just kind of inflects the proceedings some. He gives the vocals a certain visceral grounding that gives this all a little bit more of a gutteral feel, as opposed to the sometimes purely cerebral feel of Krallice. The band is incredible as always, and this album rips.

Clipse, “Virginia”

As always, the real attraction of the first Clipse record isn’t so much their rhymes, which are fine, but that lovely “produced by the Neptunes” label. And, yeah, this is great.

The Mortals, “Everything But Time”

Part of the Estrus stable of garage rock bands, the Mortals put out three records in the early to mid 90s, without making too many waves but certainly landing on my radar. This comes from the first of those records, Ritual Dimension of Sound, and is a reasonable representation of their sound.

Still haven’t missed a day yet this year!

Ghostface Killah, “Ghost Is Back”

I think Ghost’s skits just kept becoming less comprehensible as time went on. They’re not even really skits any more. There appears to be no bottom to the gibberish. Anyway, this is from More Fish, which isn’t as good as Fishscale. But still a decent album. Good song once it actually gets going.

The Mortals, “Hangin’ On”

The Seattle grunge scene wasn’t really the only game in town at that time. While those acts became nationally famous, there were other robust rock scenes in town at the same time. Estrus Records was at the center of a garage and surf revival, including bands like the Mono Men, Gas Huffer, Man Or Astro-man?, and today’s act, the Mortals. This is pretty nuts-and-bolts rock, but played with plenty of energy, so that’s welcome. The second Mortals record, Bulletproof, is probably their best.