There’s a certain thrill, a delicious discomfort, when you press play on Reanimated Corpse — the latest offering from Zombie Mortician. The album’s cover hints at what’s inside: a grotesque, undead marvel brought to life (and death) by Bergen’s own Kenneth Holsen. With eleven tracks spanning just over thirty-three minutes, Holsen’s one-man project doesn’t so much invite you in as drag you downward, feet first, through the underbelly of death metal’s most infectious obsessions.
Death, Horror, and the Grotesque Alive
The world of Zombie Mortician is a study in contrasts. On one side: familiar rapid-fire blast beats, guttural vocals, and a love for horror that borders on the academic. Yet Holsen isn’t just rehashing genre clichés — he’s animating them. Each track is a miniature necropolis stacked with lyrical corpses and sonic splatter, nodding to the greats of extreme music and the cult cinema that feeds it.
Track by Track: Infection and Resurrection
The opener “Reanimated Corpse” sets the tone: decay, resurrection, and the tragicomic spectacle of bodies refusing to stay dead. By “Mindless Beings Created”, the line between science and sorcery blurs; “Between Zombies” and “Spreading Through Bites” sound like dispatches from a medical fever dream. The riffs themselves feel contagious, echoing the album’s fixation on zoonotic diseases and the terrifying ease with which death crosses species lines.
Holsen’s Vision and Craft
Holsen’s background in both death and black metal bleeds into every track — from the animalistic churn of “Like Infected Animals” to the clinical chill of “Blastomyces Dermatitidis.” The chaos is methodical, the production raw but deliberate — as if the undead were learning to dance. Each distorted edge serves the album’s vision: a world overrun by rot and rage.
Beneath the Gore: The Body and Its Fragility
Beyond horror’s surface, Reanimated Corpse examines the body as a site of transformation, infection, and endurance. Holsen’s clinical language hints at fascination with real-world pandemics and that thin, shivering membrane separating the living from the dead.
Closing Reflections
By the time “Hemorrhagic Fever” closes the record, you feel you’ve survived not only a musical onslaught but a meditation on mortality itself. For fans of extreme metal who crave the macabre, Reanimated Corpse is a short, sharp shock to the system — proof that even in death, the genre lives on.
Where to Listen
The album is available now via Bandcamp and through Coleiosis Records / Spirit of Metal.
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