Review: Of Fracture and Failure
Vile Magazine - Print publication, out mid-2007
www.vilemagazine.com
Reviewed by Thomas Fura 5/5
Is this cd from 2006? Yes. Do I care? Not really. Reason being, this death metal act hailing from Auckland, New Zealand have written an absolutely uncompromising, raging and unique album that debuted to a less-than-deserved amount of attention. I've been listening to death metal for 12 years, so I've heard a lot and get bored with most.but when I pressed play on this cd, It instantly made me jump up in my chair.
Right out of the gates, Of Fracture And Failure sets the mood for total annihilation. Scorched-earth vocals combine with calculus equations reinterpreted for the fret board, and the drumming is far beyond the too-often used "machine gun" description; if you played this cd on a loud enough system, I'm pretty certain that the drums would cause enough seismic activity to send California to the bottom of the ocean.
What makes this album so great is that Ulcerate take the outstanding death metal base they built with their debut The Coming Of Genocide and have aggrandized the sound by forging it with the technical, frantic urgency of bands such as Creation Is Crucifixion or The Dillinger Escape Plan as well as the disorientating, soul-numbing drone of bands like Isis. No other bands sound like this right now, and I'm pretty sure that even if they tried, they couldn't top this.
I can't stress enough how great of an album this is, especially if like me, you hunger for a sense of creativity and distinctive style in the bands that you listen to. The only advice that I can give you in this review is that you go out and get this cd. I don't care how you get the money; sell your furniture if you have to. Buy it, put it in your player, turn it up loud and let Ulcerate pulverize you until your organs turn into a soup-like homogenate. Dare I say, if you ignore this album, you should think twice about calling yourself a fan of extreme metal.
Five of Five stars.
