Review by Michael on July 28, 2026.

I guess that every death metal maniac agrees with me that you never can get enough Death. Of course I mean the legendary band. And with Gruesome, Death To All and Left To Die we do have some really cool bands these days that keep the spirit alive.

Gruesome is "covering" the entire Death discography in its correct time-line and now arriving at "Human" and Left To Die (also with Matt Harvey and Gus Rios) is stuck back in the very past of Death and its predecessor Mantas covering some of their earliest demo tracks.  But is this really a good idea or just a waste of time instead of composing some new stuff?

The album cover by Dan Goldsworthy has turned out pretty cool. Being a nice homage to "Scream Bloody Gore" together with the band logo this is a nice introduction to what will follow while listening to "Initium Mortis".

Apart from the artwork I guess this turned out to be really cool. First of all, with Rick Rozz and Terry Butler the band has two former Death members in their row and this is some sort of legitimation to release an album like "Initium Mortis". Second, the sound is very good. It is not too sterile and also not too trashy, it just fits perfectly to these "antiquities", only wrapped in a better sound. Apart from that the guys really tried to be as close to the original as possible.  "Zombie", that instrumental song, for example sounds as scabby as it did in the past, only not that crooked.

And if you dig a little bit deeper into the songs you will notice that there are a lot of thrash metal and Venom influences in there that vanished with the later albums more and more. Of course Slayer was a huge inspiration for Chuck and his bandmates back then and this is very obvious but also Venom or Motörhead. A song like "Rise Of Satan" is more heavy metal than what the guys did later on their regular studio albums.

What is omnipresent is also the aggression within the songs, something that got lost during the years and got replaced by technical skills more and more. "Power Of Darkness" or "Summoned To Darkness", just to mention two of them, are super heavy and full of anger. Matt Harvey's vocals are absolutely close to Chuck Schuldiner and if you wouldn't know that he died in 2001 you might think that these tracks are performed by himself. Also "Archangel", brilliantly covered by German Atrocity on their 1992 album "Todessehnsucht" really kicks ass here and is one of the highlights.

If you remember "From Beyond" by Massacre from 1991 you will also notice some similarities to "Initium Mortis". Again if you look at the line-up you will find out that Rick Rozz and Terry Butler were in that band back then so it is not the biggest surprise that "Corpsegrinder" is to be found here and on Left To Die's debut.

The only thing I have to complain about is the short running time of about 32 minutes if you have the edition with 12 instead of 10 tracks. But this, you have to check in your stereo though because the last two songs aren't mentioned at the back of the album.

So, "Legion Of Doom", get out of your "Slaughterhouse" with the "Power Of Darkness" and get your "Death By Metal"!

Rating: 9 out of 10