Spewing gruesome old school corpse rotting death metal for close to twelve years now, Undergang continues to push the musical slaughter fest moving forward with the release of their fifth full-length album, “Aldrig i livet.” This group of old school death metal worshipping maniacs from Denmark does not look to appease mainstream metal critics by writing more progressive sounding instrumental pieces. If anything these guys would probably take those same mainstream metal critics and bury them alive in an abandoned cemetery out in the middle of nowhere.
Teaming up with Dark Descent Records and Me Saco Un Ojo Records for the release of the new, Undergang looks to build off of the insidious momentum from their 2017 release, “Misantropologi.” I think Undergang’s approach to death metal definitely taps into that old school Scandinavian death metal world that places emphasis on chainsaw like guitar riffs and monstrous inhuman sounding death growls. Also, I find their style to be very reminiscent to that of horror themed death metal bands like Impetigo, Mortician and Exhumed. Over the years I have always acknowledged Undergang’s efforts to produce their own putrid sounding death metal, but at the same time I feel as if they stick to a very repetitive formula, which sometimes is all you need if you can effectively write extremely engaging and brutal pieces of music. The ten tracks on this new album are written and recorded in such a manner that you can forget the fact that they are not reinventing the wheel, because they are truly offering their own unique take on gruesome sounding old school death metal.
The album is constant cannibalistic feast of sickening sounding old school death metal guitar riffs. Right when that opening track, “Præfluidum,” kicks into high gear the band unleashes a violent sounding thunderstorm of distorted devastation. One area that I believe Undergrang excels in on this entire album is the production and presentation of the vocals. The vocals always seem to inject a massive amount of vile disgust into the musical landscape, keeping you fully immersed in a turbulent sea of endless death metal carnage.
As the album progresses you notice Undergang is consistently able to maintain a certain bombastic and ravenous drive that is achieved by the bands unforgiving extreme metal mentality. On tracks like, “Indtorrent” and “Menneskeæder” the band completely decimates everything in their path with a surge of pestilent sounding aggression. The riffs once again are utterly cataclysmic in terms of building a repulsive and terrifying old school sounding atmosphere. You feel suffocated by the overall brutality that seeps through the speakers and comes into your ears causing you to become possessed by the agonizing compositions that this band is able to construct. Towards the end of the album there seems to be no mercy shown by Undergang as the music gets even more sadistic sounding with tracks like, “Aldrig i livet” and “Rødt dødt kød.”
Overall there is not much to complain, or critique for that matter about this new album from Undergang. Yes, extreme metal music has witnessed a fair amount of bands that tend to write music in a similar vein, although I think Undergang demonstrates solid musicianship and precise execution throughout the album to where you can appreciate the overall artistic vision. The album definitely does not disappoint if you are a fan of death metal and I highly recommend people check it out if they want to hear some behemoth sized death metal arrangements soaked in the blood of a thousand corpses. This sure as hell beats listening to a progressive metalcore band that incorporates flute and saxophone parts in their sound…shit, those bands would piss their pants if they heard music like this!
Check out the video for “Menneskeæder” below (Album comes out December 4th, 2020):
Undergang Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/undergangktdm
Dark Descent Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/DarkDescentRecords/
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