Artist: Mortal Treason
Album: Sunrise Over A Sea of Blood
Label: Flicker Records
Tracks: 10
Length: 41:03
Review By: Jacob Gehman

When you play metal in the Christian market (and actually get stocked by Christian bookstores) you get put in exclusive company. Very few CCM labels are releasing metal anymore. So Mortal Treason doesn’t have to be good to be an anomaly.

Ok, so I’m not as into metal as I used to be. But even when all I listened to was extreme metal of all sorts I had a little bit of trouble differentiating between the different of sub-genres that make up the wide world of metal. It seemed to vary with everyone and everyone seemed to think they had direct word from God how, exactly, each sub-genre was limited. Things got a whole lot more confusing with the sudden popularization of metalcore a number of years back. But I shall try my best to give potential listeners of this album an idea what to expect.

Mortal Treason is housed on the unlikely Christian label, Flicker Records, who were started by several members of Audio Adrenaline. You might expect them to release a Nickelback sound-a-like, but nothing harder. So it came as rather a surprise when I gave Mortal Treason’s first album a spin several years ago. With the sudden deterioration of quality out of Solid State Records as they delved into releasing a lot of youth group friendly screamo bands, I found the appearance of a hard album off of a non-Tooth and Nail related label to be refreshing. Granted, it wasn’t particularly creative, but it did fill a genre hole on a Christian Bookstore’s shelves.

“Sunrise Over A Sea of Blood” is a lot more of the same from Mortal Treason. It is a non-threatening, non-extreme death metal album with some hardcore and black metal influences. Of course, the first part of the description is what really dooms this cd with the experienced metal crowd. Metal lovers don’t want their metal to feel wussy, no matter how closely you can pin to it a genre with the word “death” in it.

The lyrics are very Christian. Biblical references aren’t exceptionally veiled most of the time. Even the obscure lyrics can be found to have meaning, thanks to the accompanying interpretation commentary notes from the band on each song. Not much is left to the imagination. This will make cautious parents and your average “I’m a Newsboys fan but all my school friends like indecipherable music with screaming” youth group kid happy.

If I was still in high school, which was my Christian metal phase, I would have really enjoyed this cd. And it is ok. Nothing special in the big picture but it is livable and your average CCM department will stock it. There is better extreme Christian metal that can be purchased online or through mail order, but if you can’t do that, give this a spin.