REVIEW

The debut album from Tulsa, Oklahoma post-metal/doomgaze artist Mary Mortem.

Mary Mortem has been an active solo project since around 2018. Raised in an environment shaped by poverty, substance abuse, and violence, the project channels isolation and a persistent urge for escapism into its sound. Early musical entry points trace back to late-’90s and early-2000s heavy music such as Slipknot and Deftones, later moving through post-hardcore and mall emo before arriving at the bleak, introspective aesthetics associated with artists like Chelsea Wolfe and Nicole Dollanganger.

While the artist has expressed a dismissive stance toward early recordings, those initial works leaned closer to witch house and trap-inflected textures. This debut full-length marks a clear shift into a full-band format, firmly stepping into the terrain of doomgaze and post-metal.

Noisy tremolo guitars and hypnotic riff structures collide with fragile clean vocals and anguished screams, at times recalling Amenra. Still, the shoegaze-derived sense of haze and spectral lift adds dimensionality, preventing the record from collapsing into pure heaviness.

#1 “Dead in Oologah” references the town where the artist spent their childhood, grounding its narrative in memories of a severely unstable home environment and sharply rendering images of death that frame the album’s thematic core.

On #5 “The Hollowing,” funeral-bell-like guitars intertwine with hollow vocals before dissolving into clawing noise textures. The repeated line — “Offer your bones and lie down / The forest is your home” — articulates a psychological erosion where personal agency is consumed by obsessive compulsion, reinforcing an inescapable cycle of isolation and violence. It stands as one of the album’s most fully realized expressions of its darkness.

A follow-up release is already planned for 2026, reportedly aiming for an emotionally heavy record. However, it is framed not as a continuation of despair alone, but as a work that seeks to transform trauma and isolation into something that can function as forward momentum. Further developments are worth watching closely.