01. The Lifeless Advance 02. Exhale The Ash 03. Stare Into Death And Be Still 04. There Is No Horizon 05. Inversion 06. Visceral Ends 07. Drawn Into The Next Void 08. Dissolved Orders
It doesn't float me boat.
It's a tad too complicated and a little up it's own arse with polyrhythms. Not to mention that every single track sounds pretty much the same...
You know, Ulcerate was always a bit too much for me. I love Gorguts and most of the bands that followed their path, and every Ulcerate record I've heard until now sounded interesting, but nothing more. Like their songwriting never felt very refined and the songs rarely blew me away. I still respected them madly because of the unique style. Enter Stare Into Death And Be Still, an album which adds more variety to their style, which has like half of their best songs and consistently keeps me on the edge of my seat. It is a bit too long, and there could be a bit more of those atmospheric sections which were killer, but it's the first Ulcerate record that I truly love, and it's probably my metal AOTY for now. Great feeling, to finally love the band which I couldn't get into before.
Ulcerate went a bit closer to Nero di Marte's sound (pre-Immoto) here in terms of making things a bit more spacious, and in doing so turned from a band I appreciated to one that I dig hard. This is a fantastic album
I'd top this masterpiece among the 5 best records of the year. It sounds perfectly smooth towards a very good aggressive approach that only an excelent death metal execution can offer.
I moved my rating from a 7 to a solid 9. The biggest reason being is what they were doing didn't make perfect sense until now. The vocals were the biggest issue for me in the beginning. They weren't quite what I was into so the rest of the music started to bore me. If you lose sight of the technical/avant-garde aspects it starts to begin to sound like a jumbled mess. The vocals aren't the greatest but they're tolerable enough to where the music works perfectly fine.
I really tried liking this, and I found myself enjoying the first few songs, but it tends to drone on, and it just sounds like the same wall of noise for the next 40+ minutes. I like some dissonance in my DM, it can add to the atmosphere. However, an hour straight of dissonance ends up sounding like a wall of nondescript noise
Spent almost as much on shipping as the record itself, but worth it considering how much time I spend listening to this.
Found a copy at recordshopx.com
They charged me €9.99 to ship 3 LPs (4 actually as Ulcerate is a 2xLP) from Finland to the UK which I thought was pretty bloody good. Arrived in less than a week too.
I'll definitely be using them again for stuff which is difficult to get here in the UK.
They charged me €9.99 to ship 3 LPs (4 actually as Ulcerate is a 2xLP) from Finland to the UK which I thought was pretty bloody good. Arrived in less than a week too.
I'll definitely be using them again for stuff which is difficult to get here in the UK.
That would have actually cost more to ship to Canada lol. You fuckin' Euros have it so good when it comes to music sometimes.
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"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something."
There's a very sludgy, death doom style approach to this, so it's not to my usual taste but this album is certainly an exception. The slow to mid tempo heavy riffing works extremely well for this band, and they create such a dense, dark, disturbing and powerful atmosphere that's so unique, the drummingis also exceptional. Definitely one of their grooviest and most accessible albums I would say, despite still being incredibly complex and atmospheric.