UMUR
"My Lovely Enemy" is the 2nd full-length studio album by Polish death metal act Mortis Dei. The album was independently released in February 2006. It´s the successor to "The Loveful Act of Creation"" from 2003. There have been a couple of lineup changes since the predecessor as guitarist Marcin "Valeo" Walenczykowski has jumped ship, leaving Piotr Niemczewski to handle all guitars on the album. Lead vocalist Łukasz Kobusiński has been replaced by Mirosław Harenda.
Stylistically the material on the 9 track, 30:28 minutes long album is fairly standard death metal. It´s not purely old school or more dominantly modern sounding, just a good combination of standard death metal elements. The tempo is mostly mid-paced with heavy brutal riffs and rhythms and the vocals are relatively intelligible growling. So while I may not blow the trumpets of divine joy while listening to "My Lovely Enemy", less will do, and it´s actually quite a decent death metal release all things considered.
The musicianship is on a high level, the sound production is well sounding and suits the material well, and the songwriting is solid and relatively memorable. What Mortis Dei lack is that last piece to make their music transcend the standard quality level, which is having a unique sound, or tracks which are more than just well written and enjoyable while they play. Still a 3 - 3.5 star (65%) rating is deserved.