From the 2007 tech death debut, Of Fracture and Failure, New Zealand’s Ulcerate has been one of the death metal’s most consistently elite bands with 5 albums since.

The band has evolved from the pure tech death of the debut into a murky, dissonant, almost black death band (they are on Debemor Morti – a mostly black metal label) with more and more of a Sulphur Aeon meets Deathspell Omega aura that was highlighted on 2020’s Stare Into Death and Be Still.

And that sound continues with album number 7, with maybe even more of a writhing Deathspell Omega discordant tone. The 57-minute album, as with the last few albums, sees the band effortlessly deliver rangy, nauseating riffs upon riffs, littered with murky, twisty blasts and miasmal, droning ambiance here and there (though maybe lessened a little since Stare Into Death?).

Although lacking the immediacy of the last album’s opener “The Lifeless Advance”, the album does have a flow that seems to ebb and peak as the album gets further into the abyss with the third song “Further Opening the Wounds”, where the album starts to really get under your skin.

After that standout track, the album really sinks in, with “Transfiguration In and Out of Worlds” shifting wickedly from atonal blast beats, heaving lurches, and disorientating ambiance with slimy, serpentine ease. “To See Death Just Once” continues the excellence with shrill malevolence and more filthy, spiraling lopes that belie a sense of malevolent melody buried in the mire.

The almost 10-minute “Undying as an Apparation” somehow makes acoustic ambient injections creepy as fuck before the utterly monstrous title track ends the album with a truly terrifying crescendo of crumbling riffs including a nifty little ‘groove’ for lack of a better word, about a 3rd of the way in.

Another elite album from Ulcerate that again sees them truly locked into their sound and show no signs of slowing down seven albums in. I believe the kids use the word “unfuckwithable”?

[Visit the band's website]

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