One of the greatest experiences that a writer can have is to witness how some Metal bands evolve as time passes by. Some never change, and others go into something that can bring tears to our eyes due to the high quality of the album. Let Big Daddy here tell you all a thing: some bands here in Brazil can be what you're looking for, and one excellent name in Brazilian Extreme Metal scene is from VOCIFERATUS, a Death Metal quintet from Rio de Janeiro. Take a listen to "Mortenkult," their first album, and hear what I mean.

They keep their Blackened Death Metal identity since their first Demo CD, "Vociferatus," from 2010, and enhanced a lot their brutality and aggressiveness on 2011 EP "Blessed By the Hands of Flames.". On "Mortenkult", their musical work becomes mature, full of different musical elements that you'll find only in Brazil. Fusing the explosive and aggressive energy of their music with some Brazilian percussions, piano parts, clean guitars in some moments, very good backing vocals, and so on, they became different of those clones that infest the world. Luiz Freitag and Jon Marques produced the album, and the mastering was done in Grinhouse Studios in Athens by George Bokos (former ROTTING CHRIST guitarist, now on STONE COLD DEAD). The result is a fine, clean and brutal sound quality. So it's pretty aggressive, but with a level of sound clarity that allows us all to understand what they are playing perfectly. The artwork for "Mortenkult" is another excellent work from Marcelo Vasco, from PR2Design, being sinister and somber, yet oppressive.

The album has some special guests as well: Dominic Mongrain-Thériault (A.K.A. Tal, vocalist from Canadian band CRYPTIK HOWLING) on the vocals on "The New Opposition," Santiago Galdino and Leonardo Dias on Brazilian percussions (with arrangements created by Thiago di Sabbato), Arthur Kauffman on oriental percussions, Sandro Shankara on sitars, Bruno Sá on piano parts, Natália Espinosa on female vocals, and the backing vocals on choirs are done by Thiago Pereira (drummer from SOLIFVGAE), Renan Brito (vocalist/guitarist from SPREADING HATE and ESPERA XIII), Eduardo Ayres (bassist from SPREADING HATE), Rodolfo Ferreira (bassist from DARKTOWER), Flávio Gonçalves (vocalist from DARKTOWER), and Bruno Valente (former bassist from DARKTOWER). They bring a different and good taste on "Mortenkult."

The finest moments: the brutal and fast "Blood Runs Over Bayt Lahm" with fine work from bass guitar and drums (it seems to be a simple song at first hearing, but soon we can notice very good piano moments, clean guitars, and sitar moments), the rabid and oppressive "The New Opposition" (with a fine work on vocals, due the duet between Tal and Pedrito, and at the end of it, some percussions appear), the strong work from guitars on "Storms Are Mine" (with some excellent moments with keyboards), the chaotic puke of hooking brutality called "Mortenkult" (adorned with some melodic guitars), the melodic and introspective "Where Hope Dies", that shows that darkened melodies on guitars and great morbid atmosphere that we can hear on older works from DISSECTION (and where the instrumental parts are truly enriched by excellent musical arrangements), and the excellent work of bass and drums on "Amenti." With "Mortenkult", VOCIFERATUS is showing that Brazilian Extreme Metal has too much to offer to the world.