Ulcerate - Cutting the Throat of God

Harmony, the agreement of ideas or feelings, and dissonance, the lack of harmony within music. Ulcerate, from New Zealand, has been labelled Dissonant Death Metal. It is an interesting label to place on a band or a genre’s sound. Fundamentally, a band is a group of people that play musical instruments, and agree on an arrangement of ideas and sounds. Most bands place and mix those instruments together and record that arrangement, forming an album. The album is therefore an agreement, and a harmonious coming together of sounds and ideas. The album does not have to be a pretty arrangement, or a conglomeration of beautiful major chords or keys to be an agreement.

Ulcerate are not dissonant, but they do write extreme music put together in a way that can be challenging for the listener to grasp, there are a lot of ideas, and it is a dense mix. As Ulcerate has improved collectively as musicians and songwriters, their albums have evolved as well, culminating in the incredible Stare Into Death and Be Still from 2020. That evolution is at its strongest when comparing the emotions and feelings that come from the listening experience. The visceral experience of albums like Vermis, Shrines of Paralysis and Stare Into Death and Be Still is strong, almost hypnotising, whereas Everything is Fire from 2009 was technically proficient and impressive, but it did not envelop as much - it was an intellectual experience.

Cutting the Throat of God comes four years after Stare Into Death and Be Still. Reading the lyrics and studying the track list of the two albums leads to intriguing and debatable conclusions. There is an overlapping connection between the two albums, with life, death, ash and horizon/dawn featuring on the two track lists. Ulcerate has always created striking visuals, and although throughlines can be drawn thematically with the music across the two releases, the colours used with the artwork is contrasting. So what is Cutting the Throat of God actually about? The answer to that should be subjective and personal - the best art always is. For me, it is a man facing his mortality, the last part of the journey has been a painful experience. The man has seen many horizons and many dawns, and the time to depart is now. He stares death in the face and on the other side he meets his version of God, and there is no repentance or atonement.

Cutting the Throat of God is an exploration of overlapping connection. No space has been allowed except between songs, and for that reason it could be described as claustrophobic. Mixing this album would have been an exhausting process, and it is going to require careful manipulation to play live. The tone and style of what occurs across its 58 minutes is consistent. Melody is intertwined with absorbing and pummeling blasts, while intricate accentuations, and churning riffs moving in and out of the rhythms. It is the melody in the guitar that is the most memorable and engaging, whereas I the heavier guitar parts stood out more on Stare Into Death and Be Still, which coincidentally as a runtime of 58 minutes also.

The enjoyment that comes from listening to Cutting the Throat of God is dominated by being impressed with the canvas. I am impressed by the musicianship and the imagery here, but that is it. It is an album about immersion, and giving up - giving in, and then at the final hurdle spitting in the face of the creator, or cutting the throat of your own guiding light. This is where the dissonance comes in with Cutting the Throat of God. The music does not agree with that final telos. While the title track is one of the heavier songs on the album, the rest of it does not marry up emotionally to an image of cutting the throat of God. Ulcerate has become so good that I expected more. It is expectation that is the sign of a great artist, but with rising expectations comes the increased possibility of failing to meet them. Cutting the Throat of God seems calculated and forced.

What is the mood that Ulcerate are conveying here? When I hear the album, I am impressed. This is heavy and challenging music, but it is dense to the point of exhausting and there is nothing here that Ulcerate has not explored before - nothing here that can hurt me - my jaw is never on the floor. I have become used to the brilliance of this band, which is a shame. This conclusion is a sign that Ulcerate's evolution has stalled, and they are the type of band that should be exploring new sounds and textures and pushing that envelope. Ulcerate has become immersed in a version of themselves that is not human, not capable of feeling. Ulcerate need to break out of that before they become extreme metal's version of what Tool has become.

Ulcerate command respect. They are at that level where they would have to do something downright disastrous to have that stamp of quality questioned, and this album is nowhere near that. Does Cutting the Throat of God invoke end of life like nightmares or depict the type of emotions that I think they were going for? no it does not. Take two recent albums in Blut aus Nord's Disharmonium - Nahab and Deathspell Omega's The Furnaces of Palingenesia. Both albums exist in the same realm as Cutting the Throat of God, but both are more visceral and they are darker while also sounding more organic.

Imagine taking that last breath, staring death in the face, and cutting the throat of God, and is this the sound of that computing? Cutting the Throat of God is too clever for its own good. The problem is that this is too good to dislike, but not a great enough album to be anything more than good and impressive. Not quite killer, but a good follow up to Stare Into Death and Be Still.