Ulcerate Cutting the Throat of God

It’s funny, for as much shit as I talk against death metal in recent years, the genre and all its fractured paths seem to be having a renaissance this year. Between convulsing, Dååth, Replicant, and more, it’s been enough to shut my hating ass up. I refuse to up the shut, but it’s only because I’m stuck talking about all of the good stuff going on in death metal now.

Ulcerate are undoubtedly one of the greats of modern progressive/avant-garde death metal. Hailing from New Zealand, there’s something to be said for their brazen and complex, yet (mostly?) unpretentious approach to the craft, not so much forming technical marvels of angular riffs and spinning a roulette wheel of time signatures, but focusing on the emotion and grandeur that can be mined from death metal’s abyssal depths. I came in late with 2020’s Stare Into Death and Be Still, but it was impressive enough for me to do deep dives into their catalog and look forward to anything else they do.

Cutting the Throat of God is awesome, and I mean that in the most original sense of the word where various extremes are implied. Once you get past the seemingly edgy title - which I still think is great - you can read it more for what it is: a striking statement on the “rupture of morality“ as the band says, the assassination of decorum that plunges all into a vantablack-like darkness. Good then that the music really explores that depravity in a functionally mature sense, eschewing the gore and violence that description might call forth when you think of the slaying of gods in favor of vast soundscapes and atmosphere that challenges the senses and really throws your own imagination into overdrive.

It’s hard to put the images that this music summons in my head into words. “Transfiguration In and Out of Worlds” paints a commune of higher beings eclipsed in ash and gray smoke reaching out to each other slowly. The melodies command power and respect, but the thrashing, unpredictable rhythms coming from the rupturing drums veil it all in a tumultuous unease, like anything could happen and break the moment from its calm axis. Vocals impress; deep bellows that sound vaguely human, but also not of this realm. “To Flow Through Ashen Hearts” feels similarly unknowable, where your mind can comprehend what it’s hearing, but to give it flesh and vision is to stretch the limits of yourself mentally. It’s abstraction brought to its infinite and therefore unknowable, unquantifiable end.

That makes Cutting the Throat of God a bit of an uphill battle to enjoy. At just a bit under an hour and only seven songs to make it up, each track promises to test you with how much Ulcerate pack into them. Nothing worth your time is easy to obtain though, and I’ll say that the more I looped it, the more I could simply dissolve into its melange of madness where you actively listen, but almost enter a meditative state doing so. Only one part hitched me up and that’s in the middle of “The Dawn is Hollow”, where the rhythm shifts so abruptly it sounds like another song starts playing on top of it. It’s not so much sloppy as it is jarring - I notice it each playthrough, snatching my attention from whatever I’m doing no matter what. I… don’t know if that’s a good thing or not.

Any concern seems to melt away when you hear the title track though, genuinely one of the best songs on the album and a culmination of its sonic themes. Robust with melody - some of the best on here - without abandoning the dense atmo built up over the last 50 minutes, it’s truly catchy, but also a momentous closer that carries elephantine weight and doesn’t let up. I must also shout out “Further Opening the Wounds” for being another showcase of writing and riffs - the first verse is amazingly rich and kinetic.

Ulcerate just can’t do no wrong - my hang-ups on this album are borderline superficial in the bigger picture, it ultimately winning me over with its quality and merits alone. If you’ve ulcerated in the past, you know what to expect. If not, this is a good entry point as it’s one of their best, just know that you will be tested like a Scantron form. If you don’t fuck with it, I get it. It’s hard to qualify exactly who this album is for because the balance of harshness and dark serenity is almost unmatched, but maybe that by nature makes it for people who appreciate at least one of those sides of the metal coin.

Bottom Line: Cutting the Throat of God is a primordial endeavor, a supremely coherent mixture of jagged dissonance and a malaise of melody that shouldn’t be this sonically consistent, or maybe even exist. Ulcerate have made a name for themselves by challenging the conventions of death metal and heavy music as a whole and this album is absolutely no exception. A 2024 highlight for sure.