Style: Dissonant death metal (Harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Ulcerate, Death, Dead Congregation, Gorguts
Country: Portugal
Release date: 10 October 2025

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Despite my best efforts, our blog still covers melodic music¹. I get that embracing dissonance isn’t easy for the average listener—it took me until nearly graduating university to really understand why Obscura’s Gorguts was one of humanity’s ineffable achievements—but contorted, atonal riffs reflect our world better than anything that resolves packaged in a nice bow. Beauty and predictability have a time and place, but vile dissonance is a big part of life on Earth. Beasts eat lesser beasts; senseless violence dominates the media; and as the last third of the year got overwhelmingly busy, I couldn’t cover all the dissonant death metal albums I wanted to cover this year. Not everything is perfect. Sadly, I can’t fix the food chain or violence, BUT Missed Album Reviews allow me the opportunity to at least present to you, our readers, one of the filthy gems of dissodeath released this year: Undersave’s Merged in Abstract Perdition.

In the last seven years, Portugal’s Undersave have also learned the lesson that dissonance is the spice of life. Although they keep the technical death metal core of their first two albums, nothing on Merged in Abstract Perdition is as—relatively—simple as on those records. We’re now dealing with a band who just graduated from the Gorguts school. The riffs are angular, only occasionally smoothed out for nauseating bouts of twin guitars “harmonizing” in the most bilious intervals imaginable, like at the start of the record on “Effervescent Futile Thoughts of a Phobic Being.” Otherwise, be prepared for simultaneous guitars playing seemingly disparate parts in each channel. Frequent but unpredictable pinch harmonics and pick scrapes are a hallmark of Undersave’s new sound, the guitarists sounding like experienced torturers of their instruments. Each riff ushers in a new tempo for Undersave to drunkenly navigate in an array of time signatures I don’t even know how to count.

The musicianship across the record is impeccable. Nuno Braz and André Carvalho steal the show with their wicked guitar parts as they ramble across the frets, displaying mastery in all manner of techniques. Despite being a smidge too quiet in the mix, Renato Laia’s bass playing complements the guitarists well, as he frantically hammers out notes to keep up with the manic technicality and frequent pace changes of the other two. Drummer Pedro Pereira isn’t the flashiest, preferring to let the strings shine, but navigating such a rhythmically complex record with as much control as he has is impressive nonetheless. The drum sound, however, is an issue; it’s rather frail, taking some power away from the record at large. Finally, in an impressive example of delivering vocals whilst simultaneously playing the guitar, Braz’s growls are extremely similar to Luc Lemay’s iconic howls. His main mode is lower-pitched and competent, but when he brings the vocals a little higher, the gruff wails are positively disturbed.

Every guitar part is genuinely stellar, but in a record as labyrinthine and unrelentingly complex as Merged in Abstract Perdition, it’s imperative to have some individual moments that stand out from the barrage of dissonance. What ultimately holds Undersave back from reaching Gorguts or Heaving Earth levels is the lack of variation. The main differentiator is solos, such as the melodic one at the end of “Fathomless Contempt Nourished by Unrealistic Predictions” or the shreddy sci-fi solo in “Narcissistic Supreme Alienation.” Don’t get me wrong, though: even if distinguishing between tracks in Merged in Abstract Perdition can be difficult, the strength of the wreathing guitar parts more than makes up for it.

The jerky riffs in Merged in Abstract Perdition are chaotic but performed with surgical precision. Unpredictable yet always putrid, the dissonant riffs Undersave have composed on this album are among the most cerebral you’ll hear on a death metal release this year. Merged in Abstract Perdition is alienating, challenging, and disgusting—just like real life. No escapism here.

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Recommended tracks: Unconscious Assimilation… Path to Tangible Reality, Fathomless Contempt Nourished by Unrealistic Predictions, Narcissistic Supreme Alienation
You may also like: Heaving Earth, Ad Nauseam, The Chasm, Replicant, Rejoice! The Light Has Come, Burning Palace
Final verdict: 8/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram

Label: Transcending Obscurity Records

Undersave is:
– Nuno Braz – Vocals, Guitars
– Renato Laia – Bass
– Pedro Pereira – Drums
– André Carvalho – Guitars

1.  That Blut Aus Nord went melodic isn’t my fault. ↩︎