Review: Undeath – More Insane
More Insane? More of the same? Whatever your expectations are, the new Undeath might leave you confused (and entertained).
Expectations are a fickle beast, especially in the world of metal. If you really win over fans with a particular style that captures their imaginations over the course of a few albums, they get attached to your sound. In turn, your fanbase is most likely going to expect something similar. This also means that fans expect the newest Nile album to reach a certain threshold of technicality, just as they might be hopeful that a (hypothetical) new album from Devouring Humanity will stay in its lane and leave the ⅞ time signatures at home. But, as with any expectation, this can be broken.
Just like a newborn forced into a painful world, said band might not even realize they’ve signed this social contract. After all, why shouldn’t a band grow and evolve as they progress from release to release? Plenty of beloved legacy acts that I’m choosing not to name have spent years putting out the same mediocre crap year after year to diminishing returns (at least you can see ‘em on tour). No, if a metal band wishes to maintain a career of consistent output, they need to balance a core sound and an ambition to keep things fresh. Celebrated groups, from Death to The Chasm to newer acts like Defeated Sanity and Blood Incantation often develop and adjust their approach to make them stand out from one another. I’m sure if you want the same album again and again, I know a few D-tier stoner metal bands that’ll suit your palette.
Old-school death metal band Undeath exists in a pocket of the death metal world particularly susceptible to this, as any number of Decibel cover story bands show that returns are not limited to the oldies circuit. There’s a certain sound that many OSDM bands embody that can become quickly tiring if the only traits applicable are “cavernous” and “heavy,” especially when this whole genre is purposefully derivative of an eponymous “old school.” Undeath, like all the real standouts of this scene, brought great compositions to the throwback sound (especially through both Kyle Beam and Jared Welsh’s guitar work and the band’s collective rhythmic talent) while still building a consistent style.
Barring changes in production and timbre, Lesions of a Different Kind and It’s Time…To Rise From The Grave are decently similar records. This isn’t a slight, as both albums showcase some great performances and even better songwriting, but it was clear from the get-go that their follow-up, More Insane, would change things quite drastically.
I mean, for one thing, it’s called More Insane. It might be a bit weirder.
More so than the humorous title, the way the band talks up their approach for their newest Prosthetic Records release shows that their song craft is coming from a much different place. While guitarist Beam might say that “The songwriting is the same as always,” he also talks about how the approach to making these songs was more streamlined and attempted to “…[trace] the line of metal from the mid-’70s to now.”[1] The lead singles, “Brandish the Blade” and “Disputatious Malignancy,” showcase a much more open and clear album sound (courtesy of sound engineer Mark Lewis), as well as a newfound emphasis on guitar melodies and near-Disincarnate levels of bouncy rhythms. Honestly, what it reminds me of most is the ’90s trend of extreme metal acts incorporating new influences to make something a bit more accessible for major labels and more general metal audiences (think Morbid Angel‘s Domination, At the Gates‘ Slaughter of the Soul, Entombed‘s Wolverine Blues, Gorefest‘s Erase, etc.). The results of said experiment were mixed in terms of both quality and success, but many eventually garnered support from listeners.
More Insane, too, will find its fans—I’m sure of it. However, I can’t promise that those fans are going to include all the people hooked into the group from the Lesions or It’s Time… records. It’s a much different death metal album, even if it still reaches some pretty heavy moments and doesn’t let up on the violence. Even with much more melody-focused guitar passages, a more gussied-up production job, more accessible vocal stylings, and further left-field compositional influences, the boys in Undeath are still able to tear their way through More Insane’s run time. It just leaves me asking—is this even the same band?
One change I thought I was ready for was the “insane” part of More Insane. I love plenty of unhinged, detached-from-reality-death metal albums from acts like Afterbirth and Gorguts. However, this promise of craziness doesn’t play out how I would have presumed from the album’s build-up and bizarre cover. From what I can tell, much of that derangement comes from song topics and some jarring melodies. “Disattachment of a Prophylactic in the Brain” is a song that shows this bizarre ethos well, as the lyrics tackle Doom II-style demonic forces running rampant in a laboratory and the various lead guitar riffs call back to traditional heavy metal and melodic Swedeath. Other tracks are purposefully less dense and maybe even a bit catchier (“Cramped Caskets (Necrology)” and especially “Brandish the Blade”). The bass occupies a much more passive role in building the sound (unlike It’s Time…’s delightfully oppressive low-end), beyond an occasional killer bass solo (check the title track for bassist Tommy Wall’s time to shine). Comparatively, drummer Matt Browning’s performance stands out throughout the album’s run time. His exuberant energy helps build the momentum in the album’s most thrilling moments. I’d even go as far as to say that his instrument is the one that benefits the most from this new production style, as his drum lines pop out from the rest of the mix.
While I’d argue that the expectations of what an Undeath album is supposed to sound like is one of the biggest things going against More Insane, it’s not unfair to say that this new direction isn’t without its flaws. Jones’ previously-mentioned vocal inflections are one of the album’s weakest elements. The yelping 2000s-style death growls that make up the majority of his performance feel, at times, pretty dated and off-putting. It works better for some tracks than others, but the vocal hooks on songs like “Brandish the Blade” and “Bounty Hunter” become grating after repeated listens. Similarly, I found that a few of the songs partially rely on tricks that start to wear thin after your second or third listen (a decent example would be the flashy, wailing leads on “Dead from Beyond”). This is arguably indicative of issues that arise from a group out of their comfort zones, which is a necessary evil for any band looking to move on from one sound to another.
It’s a tight record, in terms of both musical performances and production, but I feel like this cleaner, simpler sound robs Undeath of the weight and strength the band once had. I don’t think any band should be forced into writing the same album over and over again and, as far as we know, the group might not have had any more ground to cover in the space of murky Incantation-style throwbacks. Attempting to adjust course is commendable, as well as a good idea in the long run. I have my reservations with the end result, but there are countless shitty death metal acts around nowadays that wish their best album was this good. More Insane succeeds more than it fails, but there is room for improvement here. Streamlined death metal like this is certainly difficult to pull off, as any flaws in hooks or song craft are glaringly obvious. It’s also just hard to go after an extreme metal sound that is clear, immediate, and anthemic—especially when also trying to keep hold of the intense brutality that this genre necessitates. To put it in Carcass terms, it’s far easier to end up with a milquetoast release like Swansong than it is to craft a classic like Heartwork (to be clear, this is closer to the latter than the former).
When setting out to write this review, I was worried that any hang-ups that started to surface were due to the ugliness of fan expectations. I wanted to give this group the benefit of the doubt and judge More Insane as its own piece, rather than viewing it exclusively as a follow-up to the previous two releases. I had a decent amount of fun with this newest release and, depending on your tastes, you might get even more out of it than that. It’s far from without merit and I can see the band doing great things with this less complicated approach to song-craft. As of right now, however, there’s certainly room for improvement. More Insane doesn’t strike me as exceptionally more deranged than its predecessors, but it’s also crazy in its own right that an Undeath album sounds like this at all. To compare it to another band mentioned previously, this record seems like a Spiritual Healing-style growing pains period; only time will tell if it’s followed by a Human or Symbolic later on. That said, I refuse to force any expectations on the band at this point. You know what they say about those who assume: “You make an ass out of [Undeath] and me.”[2]
3/5 Flaming Toilets ov Hell
More Insane releases October 4 through Prosthetic Records.
[1] – https://prostheticrecords.com/artists/undeath/
[2] – C’mon man, your dad never said this shit to you?
