ULCERATE

Already a few albums back, Ulcerate crawled out from under the shadow of dissonant oriented Gorguts influenced death metal, which was a style gracing a lot of their previous releases. While the dissonant and heavy death metal riffs are still a part of Ulcerate´s sound on "Cutting the Throat of God" (as it was on the last couple of albums too), they´ve slowly developed into something else...almost transcending genre definitions and boundaries, incorporating elements of technical death metal, dissonant death metal, progresive extreme metal, avant-garde metal moments, and post-metal build-ups and atmospheres. Very much their own at this point, and now a leader of the pack instead of being one of the followers (of the Gorguts school of dissonant death metal), Ulcerate have reached the thing that almost every artist strives for, which is having a unique sound and the respect which follows.

Stylistically this is dark, oppressive, and bleak music. It´s like watching the world crumple in front of your eyes while waiting for an inevitable apocalypse. The combination of ultra heavy riffs and rhythms, and the deeply melancholic and bleak dissonant riffs and sad slighly mellower post-metal parts is an effective one. The growling death metal vocals are relatively one-dimensional but the lack of too much aggressive emotion is probably a conscious decision, as the more emotionless growling fits well with the bleak concept of the instrumental part of the music.

"Cutting the Throat of God" features 7 tracks, and a total playing time of 57:46. All track are between 7 and 9 minutes long and this is by no means easy listening material. Not just because of the song lengths, but the tracks themselves are also quite complex in structure and goes through many different sections and dynamics. So brace yourself for a relatively long, challenging, and emotionally draining listening experience. Not draining in the sense that this is an awful release to sit through, but in the sense that it requires your full attention, and listening to almost an hour of music this oppressive and bleak is almost always a challenge.

The album is packed in a well sounding production job, and you can hear all details in the soundscape. It´s not too polished though and "Cutting the Throat of God" is still a very heavy, raw, and brutal sounding release. Upon conclusion "Cutting the Throat of God" is another impressive high quality release from Ulcerate. It´s not often an artist gets better and better with each release but Ulcerate is one such act. It´s almost impossible to understand that this is album number seven and they still sound as hungry, experimental, and brutal as they did when starting out, and to my ears have actually become much more interesting over the years. A 4 - 4.5 star (85%) rating is deserved.

(Originally posted on Metal Music Archives).

"To Flow Through Ashen Hearts" (the album's shortest cut at a mere 7:07) kicks things off with a melancholic, vaguely Eastern-tinged guitar line. The guitar has a wonderful, piercing quality to it that conveys an emotional weight. Oftentimes, I find myself bored by death metal acts' constant, down-tuned chugging that can lend an air of mushiness. Ulcerate, though, excel at being heavy as hell while also having clear melody. I love the way the band plays with dynamics, and different riffs and themes that interact with and complement one another.

The crushing power of this album continues on "The Dawn Is Hollow". Tangled guitar lines and deft, speedy drumming work in concert to foster a sense of controlled chaos. This energy is balanced against occasional slower passages which have hints of icy post-punk, resulting in a balanced, exciting dramatic arc.

"Further Opening the Wounds" strikes a mood somewhere between the prior two songs' openings. It's heavy, but at a relatively restrained pace. Once the vocals enter, the drumming cranks up a notch, and soon afterward, black metal-flavored riffs are propelling things along. The atmosphere on this cut is especially expansive, with the overlaid layers of guitar echoing out over unrelenting percussion.

Things calm down for the beginning of "Transfiguration In and Out of Worlds". The guitar has an eerie, jangling tone, and the drumming is restrained. As things get heavier and heavier, a steady, lurching rhythm emerges, and the drumming is unexpectedly jazzy. It's a bit disorienting, but in a fun and unexpected way.

"To See Death Just Once" bursts out of the gate with thundering fury. The drums are completely pummeling, and the guitar features strange, slightly dissonant intervals that do a lot to add to the oppressive, disorienting mood. The band repeatedly shifts between the types of blistering riffs which open this song and slower, more deliberate passages that meditate on foreboding moods.

The album's longest cut is the nine-and-a-half-minute "Undying as an Apparition". It continues in a vein similar to the song which preceded it, and it even bears a decent amount of structural similarity. Despite this continuity, the song doesn't feel superfluous or repetitive, and I'm struggling to verbalize why. Ulcerate excels at imbuing their music with massive amounts of heavy emotionality, and that comes through particularly well on this cut. The production is also fantastic. Everything comes through cleanly and clearly, but this is also about as far from "glossy" as you can get. That combination allows the band to dwell on similar ideas without the music coming off as samey.

Cutting the Throat of God ends on its title track. Its opening riff is striking, featuring some harshly-bent notes. These twists contrast against some (relatively) straightforward chugging riffage, and it all coalesces into a striking, powerful composition. Cascading arpeggi in this song's midsection evoke certain post-metal acts. This is a fitting capstone to the album.

Ulcerate have made a bold, dense, and engrossing record with Cutting the Throat of God. It doesn't feel nearly as long as it is, and the music is intelligent and passionate. They have reached new heights here, and it's clear why they are one of the most respected bands in the modern world of death metal.

Review originally posted here: theeliteextremophile.com/2024/07/29/album-review-ulcerate-cutting-the-throat-of-god/

After a four year lull since the critically acclaimed "Stare Into Death And Be Still," ULCERATE is back to inflict the most harrowing gastrointestinal damage with its latest release CUTTING THE THROAT OF GOD. While the title may be pandering to the black metal crowds, i ask myself if an omnipotent creator of the universe exists in a physical form and therefore would God have a throat? Existential quandaries aside, ULCERATE steadily but surely over its seven album run has incrementally refined its unique brand of aggressive disso-death into an art form all its own. This seventh album in the ULCERATE canon takes a deeper dip into the world of atmospheric sludge metal with a wider breadth of stylistic approaches that were hampered by the incessant brutality on previous works that hammered it all out with authoritative ease.

Existing as a stable power trio since the band's 2009 release "Everything Is Fire," ULCERATE has become a well-oiled machine where these three musicians have fused into one frightening force and on CUTTING THE THROAT OF GOD showcase the newly established attribute of restraint as heard on the opening nonchalant slow burner approach of "To Flow Through Ashen Hearts" which focuses less on speed and turns up the burner for atmospheric constructs from simmer to fully fueled. By delivering slowed down tempos, the band keeps things firmly planted in the ferocity of the death metal camp by offering exotic guitar riffs delivered by Michael Hoggard, the dissonant bass counterpoints of Paul Kelland and the bantering drumming gymnastics of Jamie Saint Merat. Kelland's guttural growls have changed little and he ferociously enunciates every sacrilegious syllabic utterance with all the brash bravado that ULCERATE has infused into its technical cauldron of steaming hot disso-death from the beginning.

The album features seven brand spanking new tracks that discordantly reverberate with heavy distortion for nearly 58 minutes of suffocating darkness and despair. While the band's trajectory has been incrementally slow-paced in its evolution, CUTTING THE THROAT OF GOD is noticeably different than its predecessor in that it feels less rampaging even from the 2020 release "Stare Into Death And Be Still." The mix is distinguishable as well with more distinct tones and timbres oozing out of the delirious din that advances in tenacious tumult only with a more controlled impulse to leap into frenetic displays of brutal savagery. In fact this is probably the least barbaric sounding of the entire ULCERATE discography although despite the somewhat cooling off effect in terms of unbridled speed and incessant pummelation of the senses, CUTTING THE THROAT OF GOD by no means sounds like a wimpy rendition of a once great band. No way.

This latest discharge of dissonant din is merely shifting around the dynamics a bit and focusing a bit more on atmospheric diversions from the one-trick pony penchants of a larger swath of technical death metal bands out there. Speed freaks worry not for moments of letting the rabid pit bull off the leash do occur. While many are acclaiming this release as the best of the lot, personally i favor the heavier adrenalized speedfests of the past. With no disparaging criticism in the least against this new flavor of ULCERATE's established sound, it would appear to me that the sudden interest in propelling ULCERATE to the top of the disso-death camp is more a result of the greater metal world finding a nice comfort zone in the more extreme expressions of death metal. To my insatiable ears though this one sounds a bit tame by weeding out the many of the progressive tendencies and ear-splitting bombast of the past in favor of a more streamlined post-metal continuity. While not my ultimate ULCERATE experience, there's no denying that these guys have mastered the art of this gnarled nasty niche of extreme metal and even with these changes makes CUTTING THE THROAT OF GOD an excellent relevant smattering of modern disso-death.

"Shrines of Paralysis" is relatively similar in style to the dissonant and technical death metal featured on "Vermis (2013)". It´s a style of music the band introduced on their second album "Everything Is Fire (2009)" and have developed and refined since then. Ulcerate are strongly influenced by mid- to late 90s Gorguts and that act´s creative use of dissonance and desire to push the boundaries of death metal. It´s dark and ultra heavy oppressive music, and even when the band play faster, the overall sound is still gloomy and heavy.

It´s pretty surely an aquired taste if the listener is able to appreciate the band´s vision as the heavy use of dissonance is probably an obstacle for some. Viewed more objectively Ulcerate arguably succeed well with their ideas though, and "Shrines of Paralysis" is generally an adventurous, massive, and gritty journey into darkness. The band are technically very well playing, and although the growling vocals are one-dimensional and a bit emotionless in nature, they do get the job done and apply another layer of bleakness to the listening experience...

...and this is bleak, bleak, bleak. Not even a small ray of light will ever be able to penetrate the thick dissonant darkness of the material on the 8 track, 57:44 minutes long album. "Shrines of Paralysis" features a heavy, detailed, and raw sounding production, which suits the material perfectly, so upon conclusion "Shrines of Paralysis" is another high quality release by Ulcerate. A 4 star (80%) rating is deserved.

(Originally posted on Metal Music Archives)

Two words and one influence have always been among the descriptors of Ulcerate and that´s inaccessible, dissonant, and Gorguts. While Ulcerate have managed to stay relevant and continue to release albums in the years since their inception in 2002, they haven´t strayed too far from their original formula or from their obvious Gorguts influence on any of their previous releases. What they have done though is develop their sound slowly but steadily from album to album, and adding more and more of a unique touch to their bleak and dissonant technical death metal style and that´s what has happened again on "Stare into Death and Be Still". One more step out of the shadow of Gorguts.

When that is said this is still strongly Gorguts influenced technical death metal, featuring dissonant twisted riffs and open chords, complex and challenging technical rhythm work, and some deep growling vocals, which this time around has become slightly more intelligible. I won´t remove the inaccessible label from my description of the music, but "Stare into Death and Be Still" is to date the most accessible release from Ulcerate and I hear more memorable and catchy moments here than before. The songwriting is more focused on those qualities and while this is still bleak and brutal music, it features a little less of the impenetrable darkness of some of the predecessors. It´s actually quite atmospheric at times and occasionally leans towards post-metal territory.

Ulcerate generally seem a little more interested in opening up their intriguing take on technical death metal to the listener, and it´s not done by compromising their integrity or the brutality of their music. It´s small details like a semi-melodic hook, an intelligible vocal phrase, or maybe a heavy groove, which is a bit more catchy and simple than usual. A good example is the title track, which is an incredibly creative composition, featuring many intriguing riffs and rhythms and an atmospheric middle section. But while it´s certainly a complex and challenging song, there are also some more simple features, which makes it at least occasionally accessible.

"Stare into Death and Be Still" features a crushingly brutal and heavy sound production, which is perfect for the material and helps the tracks to shine. This is an album for those who are interested in a different take on technical death metal. Forget about conventional power chord riffs, guitar solos, or regular drum patterns. When you cross the threshold and enter "Stare into Death and Be Still" you are in for an adventurous ride that´s sure to challenge the conventional ideas of what death metal should sound like. A 4 star (80%) rating is fully deserved.

(Originally posted on Metal Music Archives)

Following the band's last album "Shrines of Paralysis" which saw the light in 2016 comes the aptly titled (for 2020) album STARE INTO DEATH AND BE STILL and considering the album was released in April of 2020, it's unlikely the album prognosticated the tumultuous chain of events haunting this calendar year with the most noticeable headache being the Covid-19 global pandemic. Like many such tech death acts that strive to unleash the most fiery caustic acrobatics of complexity and detachment possible, ULCERATE has found a new lease on life by crafting a less suffocating album that walks a tightrope between the heavy bombastic dissonance and downtuned dread of the previous offerings and adds a bit more atmospheric prowess in the form of melodic counterpoints and production clarity.

STARE INTO DEATH AND BE STILL in many ways is business as usual with that brutal atmospheric tech death scourge of midtempo sludginess with percussive laziness alternating with mind-numbing drumming wizardry but something seems more focused on this sixth album by ULCERATE, a band that i have never quite wrapped my head around despite owning the majority of their discography and giving proper attention for the clicking process. Something about this band has always turned me off whether it be the cadences of the dirge-like plodding of the martial rhythms, the depressive chunky riffs or the brutal bombast of the metal pummeling the senses with dissonant bleakness after a nuclear bomb drops. STARE INTO DEATH AND BE STILL is the album for me that final appeals to my tech death sensibilities and it seems the extra attention to the atmospheric counterpoints of the wind-swept guitar sweeps and fine-tuned compositional constructs are just what the doctor ordered. I can relate to this one unlike the ones prior.

One of my major hurdles regarding the appreciation of ULCERATE's tech death has clearly been the vocal style of Paul Kelland. For no clear reason his growly vocal style has rubbed me the wrong way like an infested sore filled with hatching maggots An irritating and enervating factor which while unexplainable still provided the wrong "frequency" of death metal vocal bliss for my ears to appreciate but that too has changed on this one.. Something shifted on STARE INTO DEATH AND BE STILL where all the elements of ULCERATE's prior musical style have aligned like a rare syzygy of astrological bonanzas that offer a bright future as shown in the cards. The clouds have lifted and although a bleak depressive sky still exists beyond the veil, its' the kind of turbid orotundity that fires on all pistons thus showing how the tiniest of details in a band can be enough to make you a hardcore fan or a diehard deserter. For all my efforts ULCERATE has been the latter until this release reversed that course.

Hovering around the same hour's playing time as the band's previous efforts (save the debut), STARE INTO DEATH AND BE STILL finds the band maturing in a way that allows the sum of the parts to see a much bigger picture and how one musical methodology was tweaked to allow a much clearer synergy of the cast of caustic characters behind the wheel. At long last, despite my best efforts i can now say i'm in the ULCERATE club with this new album that so very much encapsulates the zeitgeist of the contemporary madness the world collectively experiences in this most surreal of calendar years. ULCERATE trods on like a sober observer of death and destruction delivered through the seasoned musical sounds of the guitar, bass and drums. In a world where this style of murky, atonal tech metal seems to be overplayed, somehow ULCERATE has surprised me and crafted an album that takes the band into higher levels of competence. Nice!

In many ways Jamie Saint Merat is an incredibly gifted artist, which is certainly also true when it comes to his drumming, which is varied and skillfully executed. Ulcerate is a three- piece and the other two guys in the band, Paul Kelland (Bass, vocals) and Michael Hoggard (guitars), are equally talented. Together the three of them produce a dense, chaotic sounding, twisted, dissonant and complex type of death metal with post metal leanings (still with a very obvious Gorguts influence). That was also the case on the band's 3rd full-length studio album "The Destroyers of All (2011)". Stylistically the two albums are very much alike, but the more organic sound production on "Vermis" sets them apart. Other than that I don't hear much development of their sound, and that might be a minor issue, but when the music is delivered with fierce conviction as it is here and the tracks are generally intriguing throughout, there is ultimately little to complain about. The growling vocals could probably have been delivered a bit less monotone and maybe a bit more varied, but again it's a minor issue, and they ultimately get the job done.

The band excel in creating chaotic despair ridden atmospheres. Pictures of barren wastelands and post war urban decay are instantly created in my mind. This is not happy music to put it mildly. It's not fiercely aggressive either (although it's very energetic and busy) but rather monumental and gloomy. The balance between chaotic dissonance (played in ultra fast tempos, with split second breaks and time signature changes) and atmospheric (but never even close to being melodic) moments is effectful. Upon conclusion "Vermis" is another strong release by Ulcerate. I think I favour "The Destroyers of All (2011)" over this one, but a 4 star (80%) rating is still fully deserved.

After a foreboding sluggish start, the chaos ensues, with warped riffs slithering over odd-ball tempo shifts and, at times, completely demented though precise drumming. The chord progressions of the guitars are often quite abstract, with ringing notes chiming atonally over the maelstrom, like a guitar being tuned while a riff is being played. Blistering passages morph into quieter menacing sections at any given time, while growls roar somewhere within the tidal waves of unbridled calamity.

Yet there's lots of structure here, along with remarkable musicianship. Unlike their more spacious last offering, Vermis has a more concrete foundation, even if the bricks shift around a lot, and it's essentially more memorable as far as individual songs are concerned. Dark as hell, with an album cover that perfectly captures the essence of the music, this barrage of tracks are propulsive, but nowhere near predictable, except for the signature Ulcerate "sound" that's sort of established itself at this point. There's no mistaking one of this band's tunes.

I'd actually rank this right up there as possibly their finest recording, as it still sounds like metal music undergoing a violent seizure, but this time around it's a little more coherent with a darker and more ominous tone than its predecessors. Even the measured vocals have a little more character to them concerning their past couple of releases. Ulcerate have created one vicious tentacled aberration here...so enjoy the music or tear up your neighbors belly, it's all good.

Being "different" doesn't always correspond to being "good" or even "listenable", but for those who don't mind a whole lot of blast beats and guitar noise can certainly find something to enjoy here. Some of these erratic riffs are quite fascinating, and I can imagine the writing process for some of these songs must have been an unusual and taxing endeavor, in that anything remotely catchy and easy to headbang to had to have been scrapped. It makes for uneasy listening, but the talent shines through without the need of guitar solos to showcase instrumental skills.

Ben Read's vocals add to the disarray, fluctuating between lower registered growls to high pitched screeches at any given moment, which offers more variety than his replacement concerning their next album, but at the same time it sometimes distracts from the wild music. I know I've somewhat dissed bassist Paul Kelland's more monotone vocal approach in the past, but in retrospect it actually worked better in contributing to the band's overall atmosphere regarding their followup releases.

That's another point in itself, in that while the band's technicality is certainly there on this release, they would further delve into weirder and more varied territory on their subsequent efforts which enhances the cold shape-shifting aura the band can pull off, whereas Of Fracture And Failure seems content to just drill a hole in the brain and induce ulcer in the body.

Still, the progressive side of the band really started kicking in here, and musically it's perplexing riff-wise but entertaining to my veteran ears, but for me it would be their next album that truly defined what the band were aiming for in terms of uniqueness.

Ulcerate's song constructions possess a linear flow that suddenly shift at will in speed and intensity with little or no warning. Calm but cold guitar-based ambience gives way to a torrential wave of blasting and roaring guitars with riff patterns that seem barely discernible with all the shimmering harmonics and atonal chords writhing away over a rhythmic backdrop of brutality. The drummer in particular is fantastic, pinballing between furious aggression and slower though no less tricky tempos, straying from constant pummeling to allow for the dark and unusual aura this album holds to seep through.

That's what really separates this act from much of their peers, the strong focus on atmosphere, which in this case is cold, dreary and unsurprisingly violent. What I really dig the most about this release, my favorite of theirs in fact, is just how well it balances the brutal nature of their earlier material with the more exploratory emphasis on atonal atmospherics while not sacrificing any ferocity (which I feel occurred to some extent regarding The Destroyers Of All). Vocally, the growls are heavy, deep and monotone, but balanced by the pulverizing nature of the music's production qualities and general frenetic pace-shifting patterns, they rather suit the music more than say a screamer or an actual vocalist who sings. It all just adds to the bleak apocalyptic nature of these songs, with tracks like "Soullessness Embraced" really showcasing the skill-level these guys possess, which is quite formidable. Hell, the opening oddball riffs of "Withered and Obsolete" alone must have been a chore to memorize, and this band is well known for its strong live performances.

Not music for those prone to stomach ulcers, Ulcerate did everything right here, giving themselves a distinctive sound and an oppressive air that's not easy to traverse through, but definitely worth it for those into this sort of craziness, such as myself.