Review Summary: The Ulcerate Record We Need AND Deserve
Ulcerate are, objectively, one of the most consistent groups of today’s generation of death metal. Across seventeen years, and now,
seven full-length albums, their sound has remained singularly malevolent, focused, and eponymous. Many bands and artists these days are (or claim to be) influenced by Ulcerate, but nobody sounds exactly like them.
Cutting The Throat of God not only continues Ulcerate’s consistency, but successfully ties together hallmarks of every era of their career; there’s cavernous, moshable, distantly melodic riffiness a la
Stare Into Death and
Shrines, coupled with the frenetic, blistering energy and complexity of
Vermis and the untamed, visceral fury of
Everything is Fire and
Destroyers of All.
It’s a tour-de-force of experience and expertise, and Jamie St. Merat’s self-production skills have reached an undeniable zenith on this record to boot. From the ringing clean tones that introduce opening track and second single “To Flow Through Ashen Hearts” up to the wildly frenetic triple-time reached during the peak of “Further Opening The Wounds” (which, in my humble opinion, is an intensity the band hasn’t showcased since perhaps
Vermis), every second of this record is just as meticulously layered and orchestrated as any Ulcerate record ever has been. And, incredibly, there’s dynamic range! The soundstage stays deeply three-dimensional at all points, and thank
goodness, too, because the songwriting and individual performances are a delectable treat both to long-time Ulcerate fans
and people who just appreciate well-crafted death metal.
“The Dawn is Hollow” in particular is a multi-phase aural attack. Initially, it opens with grooves and upper-register riffing reminiscent of tracks like “Yield to Naught” and the title track from
Shrines... up until the first chorus takes over and the song begins to call back to
Vermis, Michael Hoggard laying down simultaneous chords and palm-mutes with Jamie effortlessly shifting from double- to triple-meter double kick while Paul Kelland’s cavernous roar echoes across barren skies. And then, the track shifts its sonic focus again, cutting the distorted guitar and applying modulation to some of the most nauseating-sounding (complimentary, don’t take that the wrong way) vocals he’s ever put to tape. It’s a suspenseful building of potential energy that the listener can sense with the end of every meter, and when it’s finally released, it’s with the glorious intensity of atomic fire. Oddly enough, this track is potentially the most “accessible” song on the album, generally sticking to consistent melodic and rhythmic structures and even bringing the song’s first riff back for the outro (which, for Ulcerate, is rather uncommon), greatly enhancing the song’s already-strong dramatic effect.
Accessibility is not the focus of this album, however. This is not
Stare Into Death 2: Stare Harder, no sir. “To See Death Just Once” is one of the densest songs in Ulcerate’s entire discography, packed with impenetrable brambles of spatially-discordant guitar, rumbling bass, ringing cymbals, and furious, machine-gun double kick. A few riffs hit high-register dissonant screeches barely heard since the likes of
Vermis’s venerable “Dead Oceans,” others are washes of black-metal-adjacent tremolo picking, others still are distantly, pyrrhically triumphant in their melodies.
I could take away some score for this album being “formulaic” to an extent, but I feel like that would only properly apply if the formula wasn’t written by Ulcerate themselves. This is, undeniably, an Ulcerate record; not a Deathspell record, not an Ad Nauseam record, not a Krallice record, not an Artificial Brain record. Their disso-death genome is unique to the point that despite open Ulcerate influence being juggled among all of these bands, Ulcerate continues to be uniquely Ulcerate.
It’s not a perfect album. Some sections I consider to be slightly overlong, even in songs I highly enjoy, and some sections I feel didn’t have enough time to be appreciated properly compared to their surroundings. But it’s an Ulcerate album with barely three years’ turnaround from their last one that’s not only better, but reaffirms their place as one of the undisputable “greats” of the tech- and avant-death metal genres.
Cutting The Throat of God is a must-listen for Ulcerate fans and a damn good starting point for the unfamiliar, on top of easily being one of the best death metal albums of this year (perhaps even decade, even if we’re not halfway through it yet).
