Ever since bursting out of Rochester, New York, like a zombie on methamphetamine, it’s been full steam ahead for modern death metal quintet Undeath. Unlike many of their peers who hark back to some mythical age of death metal, there’s a fresh (corpse) aroma surrounding this bunch that’s rather refreshing and finds studio album number three, the aptly-titled More Insane, fearlessly facing down the future. If you are looking for a road-hardened rhythm section, chainsaw riffs and blood soaked lyrics then you’ve come to the right place because Undeath serve up ten pit-ready anthems with which to cut your cranium in half.
Arriving like an army of undead, opening track ‘Dead From Beyond’ wastes little time on niceties and gets straight down to business. Vocalist Alexander Jones has never been in better shape and he delivers a throat shredding performance; fully exploring his bottom register he serves up some suitably demonic growls that’ll have your speakers trembling in fear. There’s some neat interplay from guitarists Kyle Beam and Jared Welch; their riffs, often running counter to each other, create a sense of unease and stretch the listener like a victim on a rack. Drummer Matt Browning and bassist Tommy Wall make the perfect tag team, locking in tightly to ensure that songs such as ‘Brandish The Blade’ are delivered with the requisite punch.
With this incarnation of the band being together since 2020, it is no surprise that Undeath sound so comfortable in their own company, and it’s a familiarity that allows the band to expand their palette and dig deep into metal, an era pre-death metal. Long term fans needn’t fret; it’s not as if the band are reinventing the wheel, yet there’s a sense of evolution here and More Insane is a step upwards from 2022’s It’s Time To Rise…From The Grave. With recording overseen by Mark Lewis (Black Dahlia Murder, Cannibal Corpse) Undeath have been given a wide and expansive sound and subsequently songs such as ‘Disattachment Of A Prophylactic In The Brain’ are as terrifying as the titles suggest.
Making for a strong closer, ‘Bones Clattering In The Cave’ offers little in the way of redemption, yet typical of the album which it concludes, it’s bursting at the seams with great ideas; more heavy, more brutal and More Insane, this album suggests there’s much more to come from this New York crew.
- More Insane is released via Prosthetic Records on 4th October 2024.
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Track List:
- Death From Beyond
- More Insane
- Brandish The Blade
- Disputatious Malignancy
- Sutured For War
- Cramped Caskets (Necrology)
- Bounty Hunter
- Wandering Cadavers
- Disattachment Of A Prophylactic In The Brain
- Bones Clattering In The Cave
