Candlelight (2009)

Just when you thought you have heard it all, in comes something like that. Let's classify it: Brutal Death Metal. Better yet, PROGRESSIVE Brutal Death Metal. Yeah, whatever… Whatever label I give this unbelievable display of absolute supremacy of metal over all, does not matter.

When was the last time you heard metal music that made you go: "Shit, these guys cannot possibly be mere human beings"? Well, I just did. Seven fucking times. And I feel like I only NOW am finally getting what it MIGHT be all about. And normally, friend, I would get bored and tired of listening to an album 7 times in a row, it would all too predictable, you know, that feeling of "I get this album, I figured it out and it's time for it to be placed in the shelf. It's great but I had enough for now". Not so with Ulcerate.

You know, back in my born again Christian days, I remember my pastor would often raise the Bible and excitingly shout: "This is not like the other books, IT IS ALIVE!!!", and that is precisely how I feel about the new Ulcerate album. Once you taste it, it won't let go, it will drag you in, like a hungry black hole. It will steal your soul, hook you up to a life-sucking machine "Matrix"-style and suck, suck and suck the life out of you 'til your useless carcass disintegrates into a pile of atoms. And THEN it will go to work on you. And the fucked up thing about it is, YOU WANT IT TO DO SO.

I am just describing the feeling you get when you commune with this album, but other feelings like sadness, depression, anger, despair, fear and mystery (is that a feeling?) will envelop you and consume you through and through. I have taken the task of dissecting it into separate sounds, hooks, melodies, riffs, and believe me, it is impossible before you listen to this for at least 6 times.

The music is highly structured, chaotic, brutal, beautiful, sad and creepy at the same time. These guys don't use guitars - they use chainsaws, electric transformers, pneumatic hammers and other construction tools, or at least it sounds like it. But they must be guitars: I hear hooks, melodies, harmony, guitar wizardry at ridiculously high speeds and brutality, and every single track has it all. Everything you would want from a metal album is here, but it is so intricately interwoven with utter, horrifying chaotic brutality, you need to spin this motherfucker a few times to find these little nuggets and sugar cubes.

Yes, "Everything Is Fire" is a very, very challenging listen. It demands your full attention, don't bother to listen to it while you study, fuck, or read, do not try to fall asleep to it. It won't let you. It is jealous of your attention and won't reveal itself to you unless and until you honor it with your whole being.

Then, and only then, you will hear the sound that can be compared to somewhat (although they really don't sound like anyone else) to Nile (intricacy, technical prowess), Behemoth (brutality, heaviness), Machine Head (wailing guitars), Neurosis (convoluted songwriting, 1000-riff songs), Immolation (high pitched guitar squeals), Mastodon (see Neurosis), and Deftones (slow, guitarless, ambient passages in-between salves of brutality and speed), Krisiun (brutality, uncompromising heaviness and extreme ideas) and... I am sure you can pick many more influences yourself.

Let me say this again: Ulcerate does not sound like anybody else. Their originality is 100% Ulcerate. But, listening to them I was reminded of the following albums: Machine Head "Burn My Eyes", Immolation "Close to a World Below", Deftones "Around the Fur", Mastodon "Remission"", Behemoth "Satanica" and "Demigod", Nile "Black Seeds of Vengeance" and "In Their Darkened Shrines", Krisiun "Southern Storm", and maybe Sepultura's "Chaos A.D." and "Roots". Again, no rip off or derivation noted or spotted just made me think of those while listening for some reason.

I won't spoil the surprise for you, but for one song (my favorite): cut number 7, "Soullessness Embraced" features two awesome riffs: first around 2:30 mark, another, a BRUUTAL but catchy riff ending the song around 5:43 mark.

Ulcerate experiment with different sounds of their instruments rather than going for the same pitch throughout. Even within the same song, the guitars change: now they sound like horde of angry wasps, then they trade places with hornets, finally turning on buzz saws and chain saws. There's even one moment that reminds me of when a tree hit my power lines near the house, the stop and go, terrifying, deafening hum sounds exactly like what Ulcerate achieves on number 4, “Caecus”.

Moreover, "Everything Fire" is littered with slow riffs, mid paced riffs, heavy slow and heavy, super fast riffs, melodies (not your metalcore sweet melodies, though), hooks, grooves and unbelievable brutality and speed, all complete with sudden slow-downs of Deftones/Neurosis-like ambience, melancholy and creepiness.

And damn, if I didn't have the album of the year picked already (Gollum), and now I totally have to dethrone it. At least now I know, not just think, KNOW, that no one can beat these guys to the number one slot on my personal end-year list, and I am sure on many, many others'.

This is not only an obvious album of the year - this is THE greatest Death Metal album of all time, period. Yes, I am aware of Morbid Angel, Nile, Behemoth, Immolation, Suffocation, etc., own key albums and love them all, but this still stands: Ulcerate "Everything Is Fire" is no less, but THE greatest Death Metal album of all time, period. No one comes close to these guys, no one. I wish I could give it more than 6 points.

I wish for you to be as blown away by this as I am.

Now, guess what I am going to go listen to?

www.ulcerate-official.com
www.willowtip.com/bands/details/ulcerate.aspx
www.myspace.com/willowtiprecords
www.candlelightrecords.co.uk

Composed by Marcin "Dethster4life" Lewandowski