As such, their latest album It’s Time…To Rise From The Grave is their next attempt to drive the dagger of death metal and destruction into the souls of metalheads across the world. Will the blade be sharp and the tracks be legendary? Or will the audience be left with a slight bruise and a thirst for more satisfying heaviness?
It isn’t hard to picture the windmills of long hair spinning along to this album when it is played live – the opener ‘Fiend for Corpses’ starts fast and catchy, thrashy elements with groove in the guitar parts. Undeath open up the throttle to begin this ten-track album in vintage death metal fashion and all the Cannibal Corpse fans out there will be licking their lips. It isn’t anything that changes the world, but the album opens in pretty strong fashion. Certified headbanger ‘Defiled Again’ follows up and more infectious riffage is employed to keep the momentum. The listener is then dragged further on by the speedy axework of the guitarists Kyle Beam and Jared Welch, punctuated by gritty vocals from Alexander Jones during ‘Rise from the Grave’ and ‘Necrobionics’.
Passing the halfway mark of the album ‘Funeral Within’ catches attention with its reversed-drum intro signalling the start of the track which is most likely to appeal to the deathcore and slam fans out there. Albums such as The Adversary by titans Thy Art is Murder aren’t at all dissimilar from many parts of this work, and the sixth track employs the similarities very well. Award for best song name goes to ‘Head Splattered in Seven Ways’, adding some of the staple gruesomeness that so many death metal classics throw around.
‘Human Chandelier’ offers some well executed melody, paired with juxtaposed chugs galore. Some of Undeath’s best writing is displayed during this song, each section offers something new and gives no rest to the ears of the listener. Final two tracks ‘Bone Wrought’ and ‘Trampled Headstones’ close off an album with the signature trashy guitar work and groovy chugs that have been displayed throughout and while not necessarily providing the ingenuity some previous tracks showed they certainly tick the boxes.
Undeath are a reasonably new band to the scene but it isn’t hard to see why their music has appealed to an almost cult following. They raise the banner of death metal high and hold it unashamedly, offering a new avenue from the increasing saturation in modern metal of core-ish bands with a classic death metal mix on their sound. This album might not be knocking bands like Death, At The Gates or Cannibal Corpse off of their Death Metal thrones as kings of the genre, but it certainly places the band alongside those vying for the crown. A solid and thoroughly enjoyable album from front to back and one that will likely further satiate the hunger of their growing fanbase.