Devil's Review:ULCERATE "The Destroyers of All"

New Zealand? New Zealand? What do they have to be angry about in Hobbit Land? (Just kidding, just kidding!)

ULCERATE is the name. Blazing, angry technical metal is the game. Normally I am more "into" doom metal and black metal...much death metal is "meh" After reading the reviews over at Number of the Blog, I had to check this out...and this is a wow! album.

Cold...this music is as cold as anything in the black metal field. Burning Skies, the first track on The Destroyers of All, begins with an ominous wash of keyboards, a single chord, and then wham...Jamie Saint Meran kicks in with some of the most amazing drumming I have ever heard! Incredible washes of double kick bass, cascading over and under the melodic line. These drums are not a background instrument; they are a living, breathing, writhing, spitting, shouting core part of the music. Jamie's Youtube channel pretty much shows the man in action!





I don't want to neglect the vocals. More typical death metal growl, perhaps...but much more expressive than "typical" And...the guitars...those ringing tones that really contribute to the sense of ominousness and doom are a major plus for this band's music.

What really stands out, though, is that Ulcerate knows how to let things breathe...halfway through Burning Skies, for example, everything becomes ominously quiet, with some simple guitar chords plucked, a wash of blasting drums (quietly, quietly). All serving the goal...establishing a cold and ominous meditation on how humanity is destroying the livability of the earth.

The standout tracks are the final two, Omens and the title track Destroyers of All. Both of these tracks show the eeryness which I loved in this album. Destroyers of All is particularly strong, beginning with a long intro that is simply chilling in its intensity!

This is definitely a thumbs up album for all lovers of technical death metal and even black metal!

8.5 Sins out of 10.