Undeath are making old school death metal great again. Here’s everything you need to know about them...
Undeath take death metal back to its roots, when it wasn’t about who had the swampiest production quality or the most luridly coloured long sleeve on their merch table. Based in Rochester, New York, the five piece don’t take things quite so seriously, focusing instead on killer riffs and gruesome song titles, while still being heavy enough for you to check your face is still in tact after listening to them.
Last week, Undeath released their second LP It’s Time…To Rise From The Grave. So now it’s time…for you to check them out. Here's just five good reasons why...
It’s obvious that to play a particular genre you actually need to enjoy it, but these guys speak about death metal with a passion that’s simply unrivalled.
“I feel like for a long time, if you wanted to listen to a brand new death metal band, 70 per cent of the time, they were just this blisteringly fast, hyper technical, spastic death metal band that was going for this very specific sound”, explains vocalist Alexander Jones, “It was hard to find new bands that weren't going for that uber-tech, proggy kind of thing. Nowadays there's such a variety of bands and so many of them are good. I never really have any problems discovering good new death metal bands. It's like you can throw a rock and hit 40 death metal bands that are worth your time.”
Drummer, Matt Browning, is a bloody great artist and he’s produced the cover of every record within their discography so far.
“He moved to Rochester from Chicago because he was studying art there”, guitarist Kyle Beam explains, “I think fine art education or something. He's just really sick at doing art. He's done all of our cover art. I think he probably will forever because it's a pretty unique style.”
Check out his Instagram for more of his work...
With song titles such as Head Splattered Seven Ways and Human Chandelier, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Undeath’s intentions were to be as gross as humanly possible, however, they have some pretty interesting explanations for their tongue in cheek approach to naming their songs.
“Enhancing the Dead was the song off our first demo that we recorded. It was a song that was inspired by The Revenants from Doom and how they're big skeleton guys with fucking rocket launchers”, Kyle says, “The lyrics in the song are like, ‘For war, I am enhancing the dead.’ So if you're going to enhance things for war that are dead, it's got to be with guns, right? And Human Chandelier just came from the fact that most of the songs on the record are atonal and in fully diminished keys. Human Chandelier isn't though, it's like a harmonic minor, which is a totally hoity toity, baroque, harpsichord key signature. So I just thought it would be cool to have not too brutal of a song and more methodical lyrics, like you're just building something because it's fancy. It's a chandelier!”
“The obvious '90s death metal foundations of the band are there for sure, but I like to think that we go back a bit to earlier metal, like s, Judas Priest and Deep Purple, that has more traditional song structures and songs”, Kyles tells us, “I feel like that kind of thing gets lost on a lot of newer metal bands. We all have lots of different musical backgrounds. Like Tommy [Wall], our bass player, he went to Berkeley for fretless jazz bass. I studied double bass in college for classical music. Everyone’s had years doing other types of music. So I think that kind of all adds in.”
We’re not being dramatic when we say we were forced backwards into our chair upon first listening to It’s Time…To Rise From The Grave. It really is that heavy. It’s what we imagine it would sound like if Guitar Hero released a death metal special edition game.
“I feel like it's like the new and improved Undeath”, says Alex, “It's the first album that we've done with a proper five-piece line-up. It's basically just taking most of the elements from the first album that we thought were cool and that we thought we were proud of and doubling and dribbling down on them, until they're way more in your face and intense than before. If you liked anything that Undeath has done before, then I think you're going to find a lot to love with this record.”
Undeath’s album It’s Time…To Rise from The Grave is out now via Prosthetic.
