Mary Mortem is an anomaly.
The pale-faced solo artist pulls from a myriad of influences from postpunk to witch house to post metal. They use this sound palette to paint gloomy, anguished worlds of unique expression, polished in physical isolation to then be framed on the Internet. Each project is a different strain of eclectic pairings, but it’s the eclecticism that helps unify Mary’s body of work.
The titles will quickly inform the listener that dark feelings lie ahead. Elegiac grunge guitars and moody ambiance transform into punchy beats and distorted bass over cathartic song progressions, swinging from malnourished moments of depression to explosions of furious anxiety.
Angst-drenched lyrics about pain, dysphoria, and death are purged into freeform prose reminiscent of emo songwriting, and they are performed through a dramatic range of vocal styles. Mary Mortem seamlessly traverses from emotive alt-rock fuzz vox to sullen autotuned meandering to monstrous screaming. None of it feels out of place, and though Mary’s indulgent delivery often overwhelms the clarity of the lyrics, it speaks for them through sheer expressiveness while elevating the music.
Mary Mortem is dark, abrasive, experimental, and antisocial.
Mary Mortem, is not for most people. Arguably, it does not intend to appease anyone at all but its creator. It simply lives, unto itself, in the dark forest of Mary’s work. There, apart from the greater chaos of the world, it thrives, like a cryptid, in the shadows.