Year: 2020
Total Time: 58:29
Label: Debemur Morti Productions

This is the album I was expecting from Ulcerate. The trio from New Zealand is one of the few bands that stirred the still waters of technical death metal for good, introducing new “ethics” to the aesthetics and the way of playing in the particular genre. Distancing themselves from the “music school geek” approach and the sterile, uninspired copying of classic acts like DEATH, ATHEIST etc. by combining dissonance, masterly drumming, an overall heavy sound and a relatively abstract sense of songwriting, they came up with a distinctive, innovative and quite trippy music style that may sound “hostile” to outsiders, but highly addictive to the ones who can “tune in” with the band. In my opinion, ULCERATE perfected this style with their third album, “The Destroyers of All” (2011), after the release of which we saw several follower-bands gradually emerging all over the metal world.

In their next two albums, ULCERATE moved further on the same road that they paved with “The Destroyers…” (with the results ranging from more-than-decent to very good), but somehow I personally got the impression that musical complexity and dexterity became the main purpose for the band, and if the New Zealanders continued on the same path, they would face a creative dead-end. That’s why I said in the beginning of this review that “Stare Into Death And Be Still” is the album I was expecting from Ulcerate. Because (even though each member’s performance is really top-notch, and especially the drummer Jamie Saint Merat is probably the best in the extreme metal field nowadays) the guys here subjugated their unquestionable technical abilities in order to properly support the songwriting and the smooth flow of the album. They achieved this by going for less blastbeats this time, and by adding some notable melodic phrases on guitar themes which, however, do not sound corny, nor typical, neither will they alienate the fans of their older material, since they fit in the best possible way in the band’s style, making it clearly more atmospheric.

All of the above in combination with the impeccable work in production, mixing and mastering (courtesy of Saint Merat too), result in an amazing release which will stand out in the future as one of the band’s best (if not their “magnum opus”). This is an album that features a nearly cinematic flow, an album where every song is in the right place, an album that you must listen uninterrupted from the beginning until the end in order to “immerse” yourself in it, only to discover when it’s over that you experienced something that will haunt you for a long time. “Stare into Death and Be Still” proves that ULCERATE have matured in the best possible way: Their style can be described now as modern-day extreme metal of high aesthetics, which goes beyond the boundaries of individual genres. The band has now set its quality standards really very high, and I only hope that it will be able to meet these in the future.

Rating: 9/10
Editor: Yiannis Pousios
Related Links: ULCERATE – Official Page