Ulcerate — Stare Into Death and Be Still
COVID-19 erodes the promise that the lives of our loved ones are guaranteed in the morning. For the first time in a century, the globe struggles to contain an invisible, unstoppable specter of death, and every day is marked with a rising toll. Before 2020, survivors of trauma still became aware of death consciousness. We’ve ballooned our experiences with personal death into a broader conception of mortality and fragility, and created art to reflect these feelings. But it was always a kind of personal truth, something to be shared in privacy or when vulnerable. The sheer scale of the COVID-19 pandemic makes death-consciousness an oozing wound, fresh and tangible, something you hear in the voices of frightened parents at the grocery store. Ulcerate, New Zealand’s foremost technical death metal band, released their sixth studio album, ¨Stare Into Death and Be Still” within the first few months of COVID-19. Now, five months later, it is impossible to listen to this album without juxtaposing it against our world’s daily catastrophe.
Despite their technicality and squelching dissonance, Ulcerate has always legibly represented emotions associated with trauma. They conjure an immensely depressive mood during their slower tempos, often at a song’s start or mid section, then transform into rage when Jamie Saint-Merat’s over-drumming propels sour guitar leads and rumbling bass. “Stare Into Death” still features their tech-death metal elements, but the album is considerably more melodic than their past efforts; more hook-oriented, and boasts sharper production. Each song builds to a massive, cathartic groove that is singled out for clarity and subsequently layered upon as the band surges towards a finale. These moments are rewarding, often teased by half completed and interlacing melodies throughout the entirety of any given track. While the songwriting takes less adventurous detours than contemporaries like Gorguts or Pyrrhon, “Stare Into Death” stands as Ulcerate’s most focused record to date.
Though post metal accents have always existed between Ulcerate’s bombastic riffing, “Stare Into Death” brings them to the forefront. “There is No Horizon” oscillates between wondrous floating leads and those recursive Ulcerate riffs that, when eventually paired together, build to a mammoth climax. If the album has any drawbacks, it’s that this same songwriting template is employed a little too often. It’s an old trick for the band, and while it’s noticeable, the melodies and layering are so lush that it still never fails to heighten a song’s emotional heft. The one track that really breaks this mold is “Visceral Ends”. The first half features a droning swell of guitar layers that linger and only coalesce about halfway through into Ulcerate’s characteristic death metal sound. It’s a real highlight for the album, and a welcome change of pace after three consecutive death metal ragers.
It’s impressive that Ulcerate play and write sharper than ever, but the album’s grand melancholic tambor is ultimately its most resonant aspect. Their Bandcamp page claims that the album was centered around the concept of “death reverence”, which, on its own reads, as trite for death and black metal. Yet the album’s immense scope conveys an emotional potency that feels prescient to our world today. It’s not that the album channels anger or despair particularly well; rather, Ulcerate’s music balances a narrative of emotions associated with trauma and grief, the frustrating back and forth of anhedonia and hypersensitivity.
COVID-19 makes grief an ongoing, exhausting cycle. It’s often difficult to recognize what emotions to feel when the world’s political failures batter us with so much loss and cruelty. Respecting the power of death does not mean that we should revere its hold over the world, nor those in office who profiteer off of our suffering. Death-consciousness allows us to transmit energy into valuing the frailty of ourself and our neighbors, to experience the tidal wave of emotions this pandemic fosters amongst us. Ulcerate harness these emotions and for sixty minutes thread a needle to perfectly convey what is ours.
