Sitting here eating breakfast (porridge in case you wondered) I decided for background purposes to type ulcer into an image search and now I don’t want I want breakfast anymore. I am not sure if it is the picture of the syphilitic sore, the ones on feet and toes or the ones in the stomach that disconcerted the most. Needless to say I am not hitting the second page of results having ascertained that an ulcer is not very pleasant at all and I am glad never to have suffered from them. The reason for such exhausting research is to get to grips with New Zealand group Ulcerate, who I assumed and I am guessing took their name from a condition that makes you feel rather painfully unpleasant. If that is the case then they have picked the right one as that is how listening to their music really makes you feel.
This is the group’s second album and one that sees their line-up apparently returning to the lower pitched vocals they were employing at their demo stage. Bassist Paul Kelland stepped up to the microphone and the group streamlined to a quartet for this release. This is what I would call uneasy listening, it’s not full of the joys of spring that is for sure but is designed to unsettle the listener and take them to a pretty damn bleak place. I originally misread the album title as ‘Everything Is Fine’ which would have perversely worked a treat as it evidently is far from it listening to this.
Godfleshian riffs hone in on you with ‘Drown Within,’ bass is really thick and guitars sound like scalpels. There is almost a wall of noise here and then the vocals join in and the velocity picks up with blasts flying at you and riffing disconcertingly going all over the shop, not quite with mathcore pretensions but certainly with a paralytic lurch about them. Classifying this is difficult. The vocals and drumming patterns suggest death metal but the rest of the assault has a feel of groups such as Blut aus Nord at their most obtuse and even the dragged through a fucking hedge backwards charge of Deathspell Omega. If all that sounds up your street you obviously exist in a pretty bad place and I could not describe this as music to be enjoyed, but endured.
There are occasional moments of expansive relief such as on ‘We Are Nil’ when drums ease up and things slow to a doom tinged flow. Still things are discordant and nag away and as the track finishes in this style you are all too aware that the next ‘Withered And Obsolete’ is going to suddenly hone in and slap you silly all over again. ‘The Earth At It’s Knees’ and indeed quite a lot of this has a really apocalyptic feel to it, a wall of noise virtually knocks you back like some sort of catastrophic end of days. At the end of this 50 minutes I feel like I have run the gauntlet so if you are looking for challenging music this certainly does the job. I think through choice I would only listen to it before going out on the kill so….. well you get the point. Time to go chisel the porridge out the bowl.
http://www.ulcerate-official.com
http://www.myspace.com/ulcerate
