I’ve been delaying this more than you delay your work emails, but the time has come. If there’s one band that can consistently compete for album of the year awards on any platform, it’s Ulcerate. They’ve done it with every single album since Everything is Fire and kept it going until Stare Into Death and Be Still. Ulcerate never holds back and can only compete with itself. So, you’d be right to think that my expectations for Cutting the Throat of God are so out of proportion that I should call my therapist soon, but before I get sent back to rehab, just read this.
A band like Ulcerate will always have to face the challenge of reinventing perfection. Yes, they have a formula that works, but it would be so easy to just make the same album forever. We already noticed in the previous releases that Ulcerate won’t settle for that and has started to delve into more Prog and atmospheric territory. Cutting follows that trend, with long songs filled with varied transitions between the most disgusting dissonance and atonality, but also with melodies (melody? Here? Unbelievable, right?) that make you uncomfortable in all the right ways.
Of course, the album is ferocious, easily showing a band that can compete for the title of heaviest trio on the planet any given day, but there’s something fresh here. The dissonance has taken a small step back to focus on more conceptually complex ideas. But don’t worry, Ulcerate still sounds like being thrown into an industrial blender while the factory is on fire after an air bombardment. I don’t think there’s anyone in the world who can pummel a drum kit like Saint Merat does, but the way Hoggard and Kelland complement that chaos is also impressive. How is it possible that these are only three guys? I’ve seen it live, and I still can’t believe it!
Do I have any problems with Cutting? Not really. Yes, the tracks are pretty long, but they all fly by. I constantly had to check the clock to realize all that time had passed, yet I had not processed the truck that hit me. The production is always a polarizing subject in Ulcerate albums, since it’s been a brick wall, but that’s the point. So when people tell me this sounds bad, it’s like when someone says Dostoevsky had poor writing skills. To that, I say yes, but art is about intentions and decisions. There’s no good or bad; it’s all means to convey ideas and emotions. Having said that, the production keeps “improving” with every release since Shrines of Paralysis (the “brickest” of them all). So, minuscule complaints again? Hehe!
Ulcerate doesn’t just play Metal; they absolutely deconstruct it to a point where this thing isn’t Metal anymore. It’s the soundtrack for a new sense of aesthetics that is so grotesque and harrowing that most people wouldn’t even dare to face it. It’s looking at the void and seeing nothing but souls trapped in a never-ending cycle of suffering that they’ll never understand. Oh wow! We’ve got pretentious for too long; those pills had to be kicking in! Anyway, can we all admit that Ulcerate‘s album titles are just getting more and more Metal as time goes? Even that keeps getting better!
Label: Debemur Morti Productions
Release date: 14 June, 2024
Website: https://www.facebook.com/Ulcerate
Country: New Zealand
Score: pulverizing any numbers into rubble, or 4.5/5.0 (it might even be a 5.0 in the future)
Metal Eclipse Reviews 
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