As they strategy two-and-a-half many years as a band, Ulcerate has developed right into a uncommon case the place a demise metallic band can embody parts of a number of strains of the style with out getting slowed down within the minutia. Summary, but riffy… melodic, but dissonant… Ulcerate treads the road between demise metallic’s experimental frontier, and its savage foundations.
With a title as anti-theistic as Slicing the Throat of God, a flip for black metallic. However once more, blackened demise metallic is simply one other shade of the style these guys appear intent on traversing in its entirety with their music. This album comes jam-packed with all method of aural wickedness, brutality, and technicality based on atmospheric depth.
Satirically, the 7-minute “To Move By Ashen Hearts” is the shortest observe on this album. Ulcerate’s strategy stays dense each in idea and execution, as a multifaceted guitar lead directs the track from delicate meditations to a cavalcade of bombastic chord modifications and beat switches. It comes off just like the newer Katatonia albums with excessive vocals, because the riffs glide so effortlessly alongside the drums from tremolo thrives to gnarled chugs.
This can be a uncommon instance the place the jazz comparability is smart for drummer Jamie Saint Merat. He manages to deliver genuinely spontaneous rhythmic interaction to his performances, which helps a observe like “The Daybreak is Hole” wind its method by way of a myriad of distinctive chord voicings and chilling melodicism. Whereas actually difficult, rafts of memorable heaviness stay intact to quench the thirst to headbang.
Comparisons to Tool may not be so outlandish, contemplating how immersive and transient Ulcerate can grow to be inside a progressive construction. It’s simply as straightforward to get misplaced within the sonic mazes of “Additional Opening the Wounds,” as it’s to obsess over each drum fill or guitar lick. It’s additionally right here the place the album’s black metallic aspect rears its head, with frigid minor-key refrains stabbing by way of the jagged depth.
For all Merat’s off-kilter grooves, and guitarist Michael Hoggard’s mad-scientist strategy to riff writing, it finally ends up coming off extra like a bizarro tackle Dissection-style blackened demise metallic. The eeriness throughout the preliminary crescendo of “Transfiguration In and Out of Worlds,” whereas palpable, additionally carries a relentless drive to maintain the listener guessing. Rhythmic syncopations and acrobatic fretwork movement naturally from the band’s expression, that means the songs don’t fall into the lure of sacrificing style for showmanship.
Certainly, Ulcerate might write 9 minutes of shredding wankery, however their MO has at all times been to construct a world with sound. The time period “post-death metallic” has but to development, however that’s the true magic behind cuts like “To See Demise Simply As soon as.” Maybe this comes from the black metallic leaning, however these guys use blistering pace and discordant mayhem the way in which a band like Isis makes use of reverb swells. Consideration to dynamics is actually vital, but additionally cohesive modulations and melodic traces value repeating. The 9-and-a-half minute mammoth “Timeless as an Apparition” reaches the edge of Ulcerate’s strategy. Whether or not they go for the jugular or weave tapestries of spooky murk, they at all times discover their strategy to cathartic arrival factors. Complicated, but transfixing, few bands have achieved a steadiness like this.
Because the album closes with its title observe, Ulcerate reaches a few of their most accessible songwriting so far. No, bassist and vocalist Paul Kelland isn’t singing harmonies. Nevertheless it’s onerous to disclaim the extra elating chord voicings that discover their method out of the endless whirlpool of shrill tremolo traces and unpredictable drumming. The actual fact of the matter is, that incorporating melody right into a sound with this a lot depth doesn’t have to remove from the extremity or the darkness. Certainly, the quantity of concepts introduced on Slicing The Throat of God shouldn’t end in an atmospheric expertise, however that’s what actually elevates this album above most eldritch demise metallic bands.
