After triumphantly casting off the shackles of claustrophobic dissonance on 2020's lauded "Stare Into Death and Be Still", New Zealand unorthodox Death Metal legends ULCERATE up the ante even further with mind-bending 7th album "Cutting the Throat of God".

An acknowledgement that the band's most powerful and affecting material leans to the melodic side, this refined and hook-laden new record is a self-sufficient universe unto itself, a conflagration of inventively visceral Death/Black Metal where dizzying experimentation meets head-nodding abandon - obscenely twisted and addictive, heart-stopping in its depth of feeling.

After a quarter-century of playing music together, Hoggard/Saint Merat are cemented as one of the strongest guitar-percussion combinations in Extreme Metal, and their music has evolved organically into something completely its own. The most well-produced ULCERATE record to date, "Cutting the Throat of God" is filled with peerless rhythms, the band's smoothest transitions, most compelling phrasing, and truly staggering riffage. The exhilarating, liquescent flow is topped off by a destructively dynamic performance from vocalist/lyricist Paul Kelland.

"Cutting the Throat of God" explores a cohesive lyrical theme centered around the rupture of morality, the delicate boundary between depravity and extremity, and the irreversible descent into darkness.

Recommended if you like: IMMOLATION, BLUT AUS NORD, GORGUTS