“The holiest and the mightiest that the world has hitherto possessed, has bled to death under our knife,” cries the madman.1 And somewhere, the thought that “without God, everything is permitted,”2 becomes a slogan of apathy, a justification, or a cause for lament; if indeed, it is thought at all. However literally taken, the notion of morality’s divine origin is one that has loomed over Western philosophical tradition for centuries, whether as a guide or antithesis. In this light, it is clear that Cutting the Throat of God is no edgy, anti-religious statement. By titling their seventh full-length as they have, Ulcerate reach into the murky realms of human values, agency, responsibility, and the burden of choice, of freedom, of being. Never a stranger to the philosophical, the band have come also to pair their uncompromisingly intense dissonant death metal more and more with a melodicism that heightens, rather than eases, the music’s winding tension, and an atmosphere that never compromises brutality. It’s a sound that perfectly complements the solemn and unwavering gaze at the horrors of Being-in-the-world, and it’s a sound that one finds nowhere else but with Ulcerate.
Cutting the Throat of God does everything Stare Into Death and Be Still did, but better, and many more things besides. What that predecessor mused, this work lives, developing introspective, immersive progressiveness into a living, breathing consciousness you irresistibly follow. An aching pathos emanates from the more overtly mournful themes that span these pieces (“Further Opening the Wounds,” “To See Death Just Once”), while, at its blunter edge, refrains fade in and out dreamily in a way that belies their ability to compel. The riff that opens the album on “To Flow Through Ashen Hearts” already feels iconic, in an insidiously understated way. The premonitions of catharsis hinted at through resonant ebbs of guitar pull the thread of apprehension through fleeing peaks and flutters, and only when it reaches an unbearable tautness does it snap, and spark into flame, as tremolo burns a bright path downwards in a blaze of abreaction (“Transfiguration in and Out of Worlds,” “Undying as an Apparition,” title track). The album is just as, if not more, hazily atmospheric, mysterious, and fathomless, as the prior work, but it contains that blazing, stomach-clenching urgency that Stare Into Death fell short on; that spirit of catastrophe from The Destroyers of All; that malice and resolution from Shrines of Paralysis. All melds together under the unifying shapeless form of Cutting the Throat of God’s mesmerising trajectory.
Cutting the Throat of God by Ulcerate
I hardly have to even say, but I will. The percussion, which is more body than skeleton on this beast, is phenomenal. Drums are already the basis and pattern of a song’s trajectory, but with Ulcerate, Jamie Saint-Merat’s fluid, meticulous work drives every breath-catching pause, every rising apex, every stillness, every charge. Intertwining with refrains through rippling fills, with fading, crescendoing pulses of guitar that flood the undulating darkness with wailing light (“The Dawn is Hollow,” “Transfiguration…” “Undying…”) the resonant warmth of a dissonant bass hum and the roaring inexorability of Paul Kelland’s commanding vocals. It’s all one, bound up by percussive waves of stutter, circle, and sway. Like a tide, the lulls only drag you deeper, as whispers of cymbal accent an ambient undertow that precipitates a surge forward into devastation. A tremolo taking up the mantle (“To Flow…,” “Transfiguration…”), a catch in the tempo as low and high strings (“To See Death…,” “Undying…”), or the shuddering impact of cymbal (“Further Opening the Wounds”) converge out-of-sync to ring and drawl from every direction, and an almost-resolution, before it all ends, without release, only to begin again.
Like any good piece of art, Cutting the Throat of God stays with you beyond its literal scope. Long after its final notes play out I find myself unconsciously looking back, my mind magnetically pulled to it, like some kind of strange nostalgia. But more than that, it’s music with so many layers, that no matter how many times I listen to it, I find something new, and sometimes all I want to do is lie back and be immersed, just one more time. I am a shameless Ulcerate acolyte of the highest degree, after all. And if you’re not, it’s nigh impossible you wouldn’t be struck by something here. Because contained within are what I believe to be Ulcerate’s greatest manifestations of existentially anguished, veil-tearing truth and ambitious composition. Yes, it’s long—57 minutes—and yes, it’s loud—though not as loud as Shrines—but we don’t wait with bated breath for music we don’t want to play at high volume, or that we don’t want to end.
In saying all this, do I mark Cutting the Throat of God as Ulcerate’s best album? It’s impossible to call. It may not match the confrontational intensity of Everything is Fire, or the balanced intrigue of Destroyers. But of them all it is perhaps the most profound. A blissfully dark melting pot of the savagery, authenticity, and more recently, beauty that makes this icon of the dissonant death metal world who they are.
Rating: Excellent
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Debemur Morti
Websites: Official Site | Bandcamp | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: June 14th, 2024
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