Mortician Bio

Haunting the underground for nearly 10 years, Mortician first slaughtered hungry death metal fiends with 1990's Brutally Mutilated 7". With John McEntee of Incantation playing guitar on this sick chunk o' wax, Brutally... instantly established Mortician as a band that was not only insanely heavy, but also extremely deranged. Brutally Mutilated, as well as the much-sought-after live split 7" bootleg with Immolation, generated a huge buzz in the metal community and caught the attention of the newly formed Relapse Records. In 1992, Mortician released the landmark Mortal Massacre 7" EP (Phantasm's Tall Man ominously adorned the cover). When released as a MCD in 1993, live tracks from the Michigan Deathfest and select Buffalo, N.Y. performances were added to the body of the original recording. Mortal Massacre was the last Mortician recording to feature drummer Matt Sicher, who met a tragic death by the time the CD version saw its release. Unable to find a replacement who could play at the unheard of speeds that the band favored, Will and Roger chose to take the band's percussion to its ultimate extreme by integrating a drum machine - programmed to kill - into their arsenal. The deadly machine took Mortician's sound to a revolting new level, raising their next recording, 1994's classic House By the Cemetery, to an even more sanity-defying extreme. Drum-programming was pushed to the absolute maximum velocity, sending Mortician's powerful, bludgeoning death-grind into the stratosphere. Mortician was hailed as the band who took extreme death metal one step further into the abyss of barbaric sonic insanity...but they had only just begun.



Halloween 1996's treat (or trick?) came in the form of Hacked Up for Barbecue, the band's first full-length recording. Hacked Up... contained 24 tunes of astonishingly powerful death metal that Mortician's rabid cult following had come to know and love. Seven tracks were re-recorded Mortician'sMortician proved to be just enough to push the band's fans over the edge...for good. Mortician'sWith the release of 1997's eerily-titled Zombie Apocalypse - Mortician exhumed the graves of 10 more musical corpses, while (un)covering slabs from Canada's underground death-thrash legends Slaughter and American grindcore/death metal godfathers Repulsion. The band continued to "clean-up" their bloody sound via digital means, and Zombie... showcased Mortician at the height of their power. Artwork by cult artist Wes Benscoter and noisy production by the band themselves guaranteed that fans of pure brutal death got exactly what they deserved!! The band took the hearse on the road during the summer of 1998, headlining a full U.S. tour with Illinois' Fleshgrind in tow. In September of '98, Mortician was invited to headline Germany's Fuck The Commerce festival, which they did to a rousing response. The band's sets at both the 1998 Milwaukee Metalfest and the 1999 March Metal Meltdown were among the most highly attended and anticipated performances of either festival. The best, though was yet to come...



In 1999, the infamous horror-lords disregard any and all pleas for mercy, suffocating the underground with Chainsaw Dismemberment, their most oppressively extreme recording ever. Force-feeding death metal masochists 28 blood-encrusted slices of menacing, futuristic gore-grind, Will and Roger eradicate existing musical boundaries, taking truly malicious metal one step further in creating heinously sick, horrific slabs of shocking, decapitating death. Chainsaw Dismemberment pulverizes and pummels while dragging the barbaric Mortician sound further into the grave as they de-tune their guitars an additional three steps!! Due to this massive down-tuning, Roger has concocted wild riffs the likes of which have never graced a Mortician recording. Every song, every riff, every aspect of Chainsaw Dismemberment is light years beyond previous Mortician albums. Limits that were stretched in the past are now completely ripped and destroyed. Computer-aided production, shorter samples, heavier (yes) songs and a willingness to experiment with new ideas has resulted in what may soon be called the heaviest death metal album ever. Blurring the lines of metal's past with that of its future, Mortician continues to advance and expand. The Tall Man's house band has returned...the butchery is about to begin!!



The release of yet another full-length will loom its gore-torn head in late 2000. Domain Of Death promises to be the most extreme Mortician record the band has ever recorded. You have been warned!!!