Ulcerate
Putting New Zealand on the map, and burning it
New Zealand is a remote place. It’s further down under than Australia, and so isolated that Peter Jackson filmed The Lord of the Rings there. And just like a movie—one, lone, brutal fucking band hails from these fantastical, lush islands. Ulcerate are New Zealand’s chief death metal export, and they just sent over their third scathing album, Everything Is Fire, via Willowtip.
The new platter offers a noticeable growth in the band’s sound after Of Fracture and Failure, expanding and fusing the frantic death-and-despond dirge that drummer Jamie Saint Merat and guitarist Michael Hoggard have been perfecting. “We’ve taken our time in terms of developing the sound,” says Saint Merat, “but we’ve got a very clear idea of where we’re headed next. We never started the band with the intention to be one of the many clones of this style. We started experimenting with things pretty early on.”
While précising Ulcerate’s modes of brutality, Everything Is Fire also accounts for significant lineup changes in the band. Besides rotating a guitarist, singer Ben Read was dropped so that bassist Paul Kelland could adopt vocal (and lyrical) duties. Saint Merat describes the outfit’s vocal logic: “For bands that want to have a ‘frontman,’ it suits. But we’re much more about the vocals taking a backseat and meshing with the other instruments.” From an algebraic angle, he explains: “With five on stage, you always have an off-balanced stage plot: two strings on one side of the vocalist and one on the other. So, visually, for us, four is much more striking and powerful.”
Either way, Kelland’s “fucking loud attack” is a step forward that takes us back to the deep growl of Ulcerate’s debut, The Coming of Genocide. Meanwhile, Saint Merat and Hoggard have pounded their sound into a more identifiable metal of death. After all, “We’ve known each other from early high school,” says Saint Merat, “jamming all kinds of horrible music throughout school. We very rarely work stuff out individually anymore.” When writing the songs, he says, “Mike and myself work on each note of the album as a collaboration.”
But no matter the metal, New Zealand is a remote fucking place. “[It’s] is a great place to live, aside from the geographical location,” says Saint Merat. “It’s a pretty huge hurdle being on the complete opposite side of the world from the majority of metal tours. The obvious problem is [our] cost just to make it out of the country. Word of mouth can’t really spread across entire oceans, you know?” The drummer admits, “We’ve yet to make it outside of New Zealand and Australia,” but hints, “we’ve got something lined up for the end of the year,C which will be very fucking cool.”
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