Vermis

What is the sound of bones crunching? Complete annihilation? The planet imploding in on itself in a blaze of hellfire? Ulcerate. And what a great name. Few bands truly capture their sound so well in a single word, but on their 2013 album, Vermis, and virtually their entire discography, Ulcerate have concisely summed up all you need to know. I would be comfortable ending my review right here, but I'll press on just for you.

Ulcerate transcends the death metal genre with a bleakness and expertise unlike anything you have ever heard before. Many have ventured to describe their sound as the first, and possibly only, example of “post-technical metal.” It shares the former tag's abandonment of convention while maintaining the latter's unquenchable thirst for virtuosity.

Guitars squeal, crunch, blast, and drill their way through a shrill landscape of utter despair. Hooks? We don't need no stinking hooks. The only mild comparison I can draw is Autokrator in the complete lack of interest in what could be called “catchy.” The vocals berate the listener with a series of syncopated death howls not unlike those of Meshuggah, except completely devoid of their trademark groove. I don't know what pissed this guy off, but I'm just glad it wasn't me.

But the real treat here, the thing that everyone who knows this band talks about, is the drumming. Time signatures not only shift: they are devoured. These skins are gluttonous for them. So much so that I implore you to check out what this band has to offer right now, before the members all come down with cripping cases of tendonitis. Trust me, it won't be long.

...Just listen to it. It's definitely challenging, but if you can give yourself to the overwhelming atmosphere of isolation, the reward is there. Bring some Dramamine and a sick bag. Listeners are prone to motion sickness.

Review courtest of Metal Trenches (metaltrenches.com)

Albums such as Ulcerate's "Vermis" are a tricky proposition to fully understand in a short timeframe - madly extreme, jarring and often atonal - it is built for the modern clear production style and mixed to an impressive extent, allowing for sweeping guitars to pierce the landscape of hammering drums and commendably infrequent hoarse vocals of Paul Kelland into a withering climate of dense oppression. As ever in the world of hyper-technical death metal, the deciphering of coherent songs often finds itself a mere equal at best, inferior at times, bedfellow to the display of technical proficiencies as I have discovered in this release.

Listen to the scintillating riffing at the start of "Clutching Revulsion", and hear how almost at will the toning rises from the depths to the heights of ecstasy before crashing again just as quickly. Or how in "Confronting Entropy", Michael Hoggard's lead guitar speeds off from the rhythm like momentary bursts of self-flagellation, somehow keeping in check with his bandmates who never seem to settle on the same tempo for more than two bars. This hyperactivity will be well known to fans of Origin and Fleshgod Apocalypse, while the dark discordancy rings a bell with Gorguts' latest strong release. These approximate bands are all similar (Gorguts most so) but the dark beating heart found notably in slower periods, such as "Weight of Emptiness" and at times of "The Imperious Weak", bring to mind the urban decay of recent Altar of Plagues works - unsettling and with a untrustworthy presence lurking round the corner; in short this ain't pretty stuff.

The technical abilities of New Zealanders Ulcerate is without doubt impressive, serving the death metal elite in favour of superior technicality above all else. From this perspective "Vermis" is an excellent piece of work, but the sparsity of pant-soiling, eye-gouging riffs among the chaotic maelstrom of patterns is not enough to garner the highest marks in my eyes and ears, as in the way Origin have managed in recent times, Crytopsy before them and going all the way back, Death and Atheist. It is sure heavy, forceful and belligerant to its own cause, but not memorable enough, nearly often enough.

Originally written for www.Rockfreaks.net

"Vermis" is the sound of falling into a sightless world devoid of any sensory input whatsoever, and try as you might to escape, you never can. Forever lost in a strange emptiness, you can only swim in your own anguish, moving but not quite moving; feeling but not quite feeling; existing but not quite existing. Ulcerate's chaotic raid of technical death metal à la Gorguts' "Obscura" has reached a new threshold of volatility, rivaling the content of their previous outings and continuing the strenuous, cataclysmic display of musical entropy that sounds like a tsunami of fire and destruction decimating everything that ever existed while the sun makes its final blast of light before falling into oblivion. Thank Ulcerate for this descent into darkness.

It's insanely hard to believe that this whole album is the work of three dudes. I can think of several groups that layer their music in dense keyboards and orchestral movements and extra guitar parts and overlapping vocals and sound effects and so much more, but this is far more thicker and filling. Ulcerate stylistically matches up with the weirder side of Gorguts and other technical bands that have redefined perplexing extreme metal in esoteric fashion, such as Deathspell Omega and Portal. Here, "Vermis" appears as a flurry of twisted, cacophonic riffs heaving and slicing through truly abstract percussion patterns that fly and spin between guttural growls and the cryptic madness hovering over Ulcerate. The riffs and perverse guitar sections are utterly spectacular, as they apply disjointed twangs and pulverizing sequences that are dark and wretched beyond words.

Paul Kelland's guttural yelps sound pretty damn good against the atmospheric backdrop, though his performance is quite limited in style. However, it really doesn't matter; the real show is in the sensory overload featured throughout "Vermis." Ulcerate also adds in some clean haunting guitar parts on occasion, especially during "Odium" and "Fall to Opprobrium, that remind me a bit of Neurosis. I really enjoy the title track and "Weight of Emptiness," although each cut deserves special mention. The production, too, manages to balance out the auditory bombing excellently, placing the right instruments at the right volumes and giving the overall musical threshold a fresh, decipherable interpretation of the labyrinthine storm of revulsion.

"Vermis" is a single fragment that manages to transcend the cookie-cutter idea of technical metal. Nothing spoken from the tongue of Ulcerate makes any sense at all, yet there's a startling amount of cohesion within its words. The sinister cluster of noise and growls coming from the turbulent grinder of sound delivers an atmosphere that will shock, repulse, disturb, and corrode. In fact, I'm willing to say "Vermis" has proven once and for all that Ulcerate is technical death metal's new king, and none dare challenge its throne. With so many fantastic records preaching individualism and intelligence already under the hand of this faction, "Vermis" shows evolution through pain, the iconoclastic clattering of a group at its apex. Terrific effort, one of the finest of 2013.

This review was written for: www.Thrashpit.com