Review Summary: Ulcerate follow up excellence with excellence, further developing the atmosphere and textures found on 2009's Everything is Fire, while scaling back some of their more traditional death metal elements.
Seven sprawling tracks, featuring sludgy grooves and ambient textures that twist and mutate their way to dissonant climaxes. Moments of bone crushing death metal that give way to subtle, atmospheric denouements. Complex, unpredictable song structures. Dissonant, intertwining guitar lines that forgo the cliched riffing of many contemporary death metal bands. Technical death metal drumming performed with enough feel and rhythmic creativity to remain fresh and interesting. Over it all, powerful guttural roars complete the bleak soundscape.
Sound intriguing?
With The Destroyers of All, New Zealand’s Ulcerate bring together the aforementioned elements to create a powerful death metal opus. The band successfully build on the strengths of 2009’s brilliant Everything is Fire, choosing to scale back some of that album’s intensity and Immolation-esque riffing in favor of a greater emphasis on atmosphere and almost post-metal buildups and decrescendos. The results are impressive; from the foreboding opening notes of “Burning Skies” to the crushing climax of “The Destroyers of All”, Ulcerate deliver an album that is tighter and more focused than Everything is Fire while demonstrating a greater grasp of melody and dynamics. Each track builds towards it’s conclusion in a logical way, waxing and waning patiently without the erratic changes in volume, tempo, or feel sometimes seen on Everything is Fire.
Furthermore, returning fans need not fear that the band’s signature bleak atmosphere is lacking here. The Destroyers of All is as dark and oppressive as any of Ulcerate’s previous releases. This atmosphere is aided by a clean, yet organic, production job which allows for easy separation of the multiple layers of guitar and bass present by the ear, and a master which preserves the dynamic range of the recordings. The individual performances don’t hurt either; each member delivers an impressively precise and diverse effort, especially drummer Jamie Saint Merat. Astonishingly, Saint Merat recorded the drums for this album in a mere five hours, without the aid of rhythmic quantization and requiring only minor corrections which were done the following day. Quite the feat, given the complexity of the drumming featured on this record.
All that said, the album is not without it’s flaws. The greater focus on ambience, coupled with the cleaner production result in an album which, at its heights, doesn’t sound quite as heavy or immediate as it could. During some of the climaxes, one feels that the band is on the cusp of going to another gear and really punishing the listener, but chooses instead to hold back in anticipation of the next dynamic shift. As well, the reduced focus on death metal riffing required to build the more consistent atmosphere found here is disappointing, and the consequent lack of many really memorable riffs ultimately hurts the album. While these compromises may not sound like large issues, they are enough to make this album feel at times like more of a lateral move from Everything is Fire than a definitive step forward.
Ultimately, with The Destroyers of All, Ulcerate follow up excellence with excellence, crafting an album that feels like a logical progression from Everything is Fire. The band delivers tighter songwriting, cleaner production, and develop their atmospheric and textural elements to a greater degree, though they arguably sacrifice some of their previous intensity in the process. While this album is a great addition to Ulcerate’s catalogue as well as to the death metal genre as a whole, one can’t help but feel the band has a little more to give. Perhaps a truly classic album is still in the cards for this band’s future.
