Even with a couple line-up changes since 2007 Neurotic effort Of Fracture and Failure, the premise of New Zealand’s Ulcerate remains largely the same: foreboding, technical death metal. To call this quartet über-talented would be a disservice as Everything Is Fire is a showcase of the highest degree of musicianship. Of course when one considers that the Willowtip roster contains many...Read More

A name change may be in order for these Kiwis because their third album and Willowtip debut does anything but singe an acid hole in your stomach lining, In fact, this may be the most soothing death metal album I’ve heard in eons. I missed the band’s prior two offerings (there’s a reason this isn’t called Death and Punishment) but I’m starting to think I need to...Read More

Fuck. Really, that is all that can be said to describe the sophomore effort by kiwi technical death metallers Ulcerate. FUCK. Wait, no. That’s not accurate at all. Let me try something better. Just give me a second. Wait for it… wait for it…. HOLY FUCKING SERRATED BLADE SOAKED IN BATTERY ACID SAWING THROUGH THE SHAFT OF THE POPE’S ERECT, ROTTING...Read More

Looks like the 'brutal death metal' [my least favorite redundancy] genre is finally starting to grow up... in fits and starts, anyway. A couple of years ago, Defeated sanity put out Psalms of the Moribund, an album that was single-mindedly pummelling, with slam riffs aplenty, but also surprisingly cerebral, with plenty of subtlety and lots of fresh ideas included. Now we get this, the second...Read More

After the clinical tech death assault that was Of Fracture and Failure, New Zealand’s Ulcerate has made a few changes to their sound and thankfully replaced vocalist Ben Reed (bassist Paul Keland now performs vocals) and the end result is yet another simply killer Willowtip release and one of the most striking death metal albums of 2009 (and beyond). Whereas Of Fracture and Failure was a...Read More

New Zealand's pretty small, so it's no surprise that its metal scene is proportionately intimate. That being said, Ulcerate are competitive with the best bands from anywhere on the globe. Viva globalism! Their music combines the brutal, downtuned riffing of traditional death metal (think Immolation or Morbid Angel) with the dissonance and shifting time signatures of Gorguts and the slow,...Read More

Having been a big fan of New Zealand's Ulcerate since their demo days, I was quite excited when their latest full-length, "Everything is Fire", showed up in the mail from Willowtip. This time out their bassist is handling the vocal duties, and they've also got one new guitarist, but thankfully their sinuous take on death metal remains unchanged: So you can expect eight generally lengthy...Read More