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Ulcerate: Vermis

21/08/13 || The Duff

Ulcerate are a New Zealand outfit that was once a tech-death band with hints of Neurosis, Cult of Luna and such but since their sophomore “Of Fracture and Failure” have evolved some, their peak arguably “Everything is Fire” coming to a thick froth of angular and grandiose atmospheres, angry, catchy riffs fired out in sporadic, original bursts of energy mixing Deathspell Omega, Immolation and Gorguts plus anguish and vitriol to create a masterpiece that surpassed the masters in the eyes of many.

The band was finding their sound only to shift into a more lush variety, more ordered yet oddly even bleaker, simply streamlined and not so much scaled to reach the summit of despair, chaos and destruction that had been met with “Everything is Fire”. “The Destroyers of All”, to many and myself, was Ulcerate’s finest hour in a string of innovative masterworks, and here we find extreme metal’s sweethearts releasing their all important fifth record, their best yet.

Of all things, “Vermis” starts with an introduction that sounds like the sound of nuclear fallout settling on the heads of your loved ones, sprawling chords with the pulled-back, monstrous bellow of vocalist Paul Kelland; Ben Read left the band some several albums back, and since the more traumatic nature of the music, the straightforward, entirely soulless roars are entirely complementary – pure fury merging with pure fury, essentially, but there is some range, although expressed minimally (bear in mind he has to play the bass while singing live).

The first single released late July or early August, “Confronting Entropy”, is the middle-mark, and actually the most traditional Ulcerate track on the album, yet the layers of that track, its intricacies took me many listens to settle into; Ulcerate have worked hard to create their most captivating, twisting yet immediate and most iconic, most memorable of all their masterpieces, the title never more appropriate (vermis meaning worm in Latin), there are times when I’m thinking “Holy shit, I’m covered in snakes. SOMEBODY HELP ME I’M BEING EATEN ALIVE BY FUCKING SNAKES!!”.

The complexity I found to be a lot more engrossing, making me listen to it more than their classic albums in gearing up for the full-length’s release, and this is just the one track. We find a record that is exceptionally structured, layered, excellently paced, diverse, and yet probably the slowest of all the Ulcerate albums – Jamie Saint Merat blasts seldom in comparison to older, more frantic records, and when he does, it is more that militaristic, atmospheric style of his that he has mastered to sound as alive and evil as the undulating guitars.

The compositions are immaculate, grandiose, they are now no longer flirting with dissonance but rather fully embracing it, they have respected the feedback concerning their recent treading into catchy, accessible song-structuring norms, and have merged the bleakness of their last record, the ‘end of days’ ominous of “Everything is Fire” and the sporadic ferocity of “Of Fracture and Failure”, their trademark hard-edged angular melody and lurking delicateness, and wrapped it all up in suffocating cellophane to come and annihilate even the cockroaches.

Thick, build-up melodic flurries have made an appearance in almost condensed, Isis fashion, a recent addition that increase tension, done before but never quite like this, not quite so openly ‘beautiful’, if there were such a word to describe Ulcerate, plus that almost uplifting despondency, that wallowing realization off the ending of “Cold Becoming” off “The Destroyers of All” also makes more of an appearance on “Vermis”.

The record has many highlights, but flows as one, thematically we also have resurgences, similar riffs. The closing riff of “Imperious Weak” is probably the most catchy, and “Weight of Emptiness” is fast becoming one of my favourite slow-paced death metal tracks, but overall it is one seamless journey with the exception of “Fall to Opprobrium”, which seems unnecessary for how I would cream if the crushing closing riff to “Confronting Entropy” were to shift directly into the hard-hitting, gargantuan beat of “The Imperious Weak”.

“Vermis” is pure energy, even if there are riffs, Ulcerate are writing majestic, confrontational compositions that writhe into dances of precise, negative and ultimately beautiful masterworks, seven tracks that symbolize the downfall of man in ways that defy musical sense; when they said they had spent tireless hours arranging, the hard work is clearly so as to not conform with what is aesthetically reassuring, but rather to lift the listener up to other spiritual planes on that same ethereal scale as early Neurosis with an equal, intense engagement to the music.

The production couldn’t be more fitting; this is the Apocalypse, this is dirt, this is thousands of years of human failure coming to an end where the hope we clung to by our fingertips has proven to yield nothing but our delayed reality, the end to our species’ true, corruptible nature. You cannot hear Jamie Saint Merat’s drumming to the fullest, and considering he is a chief proponent to the engineering of past records, I can only imagine this to have been a very conscious deal – we all know of his abilities, his sidestepping a responsibility to hold down the rhythm is to accentuate the sonic onslaught, the excess, the completely nihilistic proportions that this record advocates – I listen to Gorguts’ “Coloured Sands” to ease my mind of this here “Vermis”; this peels back and drives in ways Gorguts is too sensitive.

With past records, the awe surrounding the musicianship would always connect the scathing beast with an humane quality, here we have pin-point precision blending all sense of feeling into a black desire to breathe. The band has lost its slick, melodic sensibility, its comfortable, strategic arrangements and become a seething, amorphous garb of black, rusted noise, sharp electrics spitting out venomous notes that pierce the ear drums and only settle down so the tears can run at the desolation in front of you before rearing its head again and breathing thick torrents of fire right into your fucking face.

Information
Released: 2013
Label: Relapse Records
Website: Ulcerate Official
Band
Paul Kelland: bass, vocals
Michael Hoggard: guitars
Jamie Saint Merat: drums, percussion

Tracklist
01. Odium
02. Vermis
03. Clutching Revulsion
04. Weight of Emptiness
05. Confronting Entropy
06. Fall to Opprobrium
07. The Imperious Weak
08. Cessation
09. Await Rescission

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