Review Summary: Glare Into Bad and Be Sad
Ulcerate used to be a band that made excellent sounds. In fact they had some of the best sounds. They had lots of loud screaming and incredibly wonderful drum-bashing and also guitar everywhere. The guitar and drum noise is also loud too. When mommy and daddy were out, I used to love making tendies and putting the big discs on the spinner, pressing play, and cranking the music to ten. I would then dance around the room in my favorite Shrines of Paralysis PJs and sing the songs loud and proud. Ulcerate did it again and again and I was excited to listen to more of these excellent songs. But unfortunately this latest album is unfortunately quite bad.
The first song is called The Lifeless Advance, and boy is it lifeless. The opening noise sounds like my tummy after too many of mommy's cookies. Then the guitar plays after but it doesn't feel loud and angry like before. Instead it's really screechy and scratchy and does lots of high pitch riffs that go DINGALINGADINGALING. There are deeper parts that go DUNDUNDUNDUN too, and I like those more, but I still don't like them. The whole album sounds really sludgy and icky. I wish the guitar sounded really vrooomy and clangy like they do on Shrines of Paralysis, or snappy and spooky like The Destroyers of All. There are many bad riffs here as well. There is a riff in Inversion that almost made me turn it off. It goes ding-dang-dong ding-dang-dong VRUM VRUM ding-dang-dong ding-dang-dong VRUM VRUM. I don't like that at all.
The words are also mostly groans and moans instead of the epic loud screaming I'm used to. He used to sound lively and intense, but now he sounds like daddy at DMV. It's like he's a sad shag carpet with fruit punch stains instead of big scary monster. Also the voice echoes too much and lacks the energy of previous albums and it sounds like that man is inside my head instead of my ears. I don't like the way it goes with the duns and dings and dangs of the guitarring, or the pings and tings and clacks of the drumming. To me this is like mixing groaning and moaning spaghetti with dingy and dangy pudding. It's bad and I do not like it.
I haven't spoken about drumming yet, but it is the best part of this album. The playing is very nice with ting-ting binging and snap-snap snaring along with thump-thumping on the foot drum. My main problem is the kit doesn't sound very good at all. The kick sounds like a fat man rooting around in a bag of chips instead of the loud thunder. I much prefer the thunder or boom noise from before. The snare is also flat and over-compressed. The bald man plays very well and the parts are nicely arranged, but the bangs feel notably less organic and more processed this time. I miss that raw, unbridled fury on records like Destroyers of All and Everything Is Fire.
While it seems this album is all bad, there are some good moments. I like the intro of There Is No Horizon, where there's a wind noise and the guitar sounds like sad kitties going meow... meow meow meow meow MEOW, MEOW MEOW, meow MEEEOOWWWWW. That was cool and also fun. Visceral Ends also has a chilling intro, with a low humming and spooky chords like Blut Aus Nord, another one of my favorite bands. That reminds me of The Work Which Transforms God and the bald man does nice drumming in there with lots of taps on those metal plate thingies. I also love that section in Dissolved Orders with the bings and bongs right before the loud screaming and the vroom vroom riff.
The fact of the matter is this album just doesn't strike the sonic frequencies I enjoy. It's not heavy and oppressive, and the melodic tones don't. Overall it sounds more like a malfunctioning leaf blower being tossed around an echoey hardware store by an groaning man who drank too much juice. I may put this on again someday as background noise while coloring, but also maybe not. The fact of the matter is it is not good and I want the old Ulcerate back. Now I am sad and crying at the shrine of disappointment. Hopefully they bring back some of the better sounds next time.
