Deceased 2024
Sinopsis
Eight months into the apocalypse, a mismatched group of teens battle the undead, growing up, and each other as they seek shelter in a community full of familiar faces and shifting dynamics.
Ulasan
presenting a concept album about destined death, the process of dying, and the sometimes unjust-seeming dissolution that strikes us down along our path Arlington, Virginia-based death metal quintet DECEASED speak with authority and feeling that is once again believably evocative of the ‘old school’ of heavy metal in their own distinct way. Now arriving upon their fortieth year as a band with an eighth full-length album in-claw these long-celebrated still underrated fellowes present one of their finest efforts to date in ‘Children of the Morgue‘, a record which finds ’em sticking to what they do best in terms of thrashing up from the grave of the 80’s with elements of classic thrash metal, epic heavy metal and hardcore punk fueling this brilliantly composed but never dryly pretentious hourlong opus. You can rightfully go in knowing what to expect from these folks but that doesn’t mean they’ve exhausted the possibilities of their all-in style of heavy metal, in this particular case fans of thier late 90’s step into their own will appreciate the overall vigor (and the riffs) set behind this one.
Deceased formed circa 1984 under various tentative names (Evil Axe, Mace, Mad Butcher) splitting their first life between their part in the advent and expansion of the death metal way and the distinction that’d more completely arrive in the 90’s. If you’re a die-hard fan of death/thrash metal and 80’s death metal in general an album like their debut (‘Luck of the Corpse‘, 1991) will naturally celebrate the real thing, a serious morbid thrash feeling with a certain kinetic tic to its attack. For years that’d been all I’d bothered with in their discography but around 2005 I began to take a closer look at ‘Fearless Undead Machines‘ (1997) and the then brand new ‘As The Weird Travel On‘ as I began to understand the friction they’d created merging a love for horror cinema, classic heavy metal, death metal, thrash, hardcore punk and more. It’d all amount to an underground heavy music fan’s ideal everything-in type of band able to flex between early grind, crossover, death-thrash, and Maiden melodies without sounding like trash; As an addendum to my quickly rattled out review of their 2018 record ‘Ghostly White‘ in hindsight I’d say that fifth album (circa 2005) took their late 90’s sound to a next level rather than “perfected” the main goal as outlined in 1995-1997. Beyond that specific thought I’m not going to write a mile-long rehash of their discography though I will say these days particularly love their second and third album for the ambitious self they’d managed as they come into their own, no longer tied to the overstretched gape that death metal had become after the major label fisting it’d received in middle of the 90’s.
The main takeaway from revisiting the Deceased‘s discography for the umpteenth time brings up the strong level of appreciation I hold for their evolution as a heavy metal and hardcore punk inspired death/thrash metal band that’d forged their own sound, a unique trip which blurs the evolutionary steps between traditional metal’s post-NWOBHM evolution up through the early extremes of death metal. Theirs is a distinct, clear-as-day voice which is still incomparable, non-commercial but still earnest and musical in its intent after decades of going at it. Otherwise the effect of sitting with ‘Children of the Morgue‘ generally recalls how I’d typically feel hanging with an album like ‘Madness of the Graves‘ from Root, not in terms of style but in the sense that they bring an equally unique personality (which’d been around since the inception of extreme metal) that still clearly values traditional heavy metal while leaving those roots well-exposed. Otherwise I’d felt like for this album the band kinda took stock, looked at what they’d done best in the past and aimed for some of the magickry felt on their first concept album ‘Fearless Undead Machines‘, likewise fashioning about eight songs of thrash and 80’s heavy metal inspired aggression into a quasi-narrative experience. If you are not familiar with their discography I would at least suggest that one for additional context, though I personally still love ‘As the Weird Travel On‘ for its out the gates energy.
The short version? Classic Deceased record off the jump with plenty of feeling put in their patiently sorted songcraft, once again offering myriad points of inspiration that manage to nail front-to-back quality regardless of it being a melody or just ripped-at riffs driving the show. Their work is still all about managing a feeling of endlessly hurled momentum and King Fowley still has a lot of words to get out but this time around they’re taking some extra care in developing each of the main songs, cramming them with ideas that line up with fewer points of self-interruption. The one caveat that I will enforce up front here is that this experience is best suited for folks who have a damned attention span enough to sit through a full hour of ‘epic’ heavy metal sweating kinda punkish death-thrashing music. This isn’t a twenty-two minute three riff death metal album created by fentanyl smoking ex-metalcore bandmembers and in that sense these folks’ work is still for the ‘old school’ attuned ear that want to hear the salad of taste tossed and temperament composed into something involved but tunefully shaped. Set aside a solid hour, take a break in between sides.
