Style: Technical Death Metal/ Melodic Death Metal (Harsh vocals)
Review by: Chris
Country: US (NH)
Release date: April 2, 2021
Per the email we received about this release, Unflesh bill themselves as a blackened melodic death metal band (which I think will mean 10 different things to 10 different people). I’ll be honest, I always get a bit worried reading melodic death in a description that I’ll get a real melodeath sellout record. Thankfully I find Inhumation a bit more technical than the given label might at first glance apply…that said the labels given definitely are an apt description of what you will find inside this monochromatic casket bearing album. Lots of blackened dark chord choices, your classic death metal elements, and great use of melody in the riffs and leads.
Can we talk about this cover though? It’s great, able to harken back to some of the classics without looking completely out of touch. It serves as a perfect indication of what is to come: a darkened atmosphere laden death metal that really harks to the name death with its presentation and overall foreboding feeling. Imagine being the unfortunate witness to the procession of dead skeletons carrying this casket towards this foreboding book-carrying figure. Is it your casket? What is the book? I really don’t know but this album is exactly the soundtrack of that happening.
“Behold Nightfall” gives an immediate taste of why the term melodic is thrown around for this band. Some wonderful atmospheric acoustic guitars jangle underneath the more classic distorted guitars almost in an Opethian way (but not fully) while the drums serve some gradual builds and slight metric shifts before giving a cymbal swell into the truck-hitting-you moment that is the beginning of “Vast Forest of Impaled Cadavers”. I mean this song almost never lets up. But more interesting than this relentless energy (because the whole album has that) is the immediate introduction to these blackened stylings on all the leads and a lot of the riff lines, painting a picture of this dilapidated horror cathedral. “Vast Forest of Impaled Cadavers” I think serves as the best of the more straightforward songs on the album, reveling the most in the relentless pummeling style while a few other tracks really stand out as embracing everything I think this band has to offer.
“Inhumation” is the first of those tracks, opening with a super dark, yet smooth and subtle riff that somehow becomes an earworm despite being not as “riffy” as what you normally think of as a “riff moment”. At times in this song the acoustic guitar pokes itself back into the mix behind the distorted guitars to have that wonderful second layer come into play. I also find “Inhumation” has the best transitionary work of the album, never feeling like you’ve been forced into the next section, but instead perfectly working itself into each place it ends up in. “Amongst Horrors I Must Dwell” is the other huge standout to me, opening in contrast to the previously mentioned song with an acoustic only build up before descending into a more dredgy Revocation-esque riff. This also serves as the most mid-speed paced fare on the album, relying much more on the vocal and chordal darkness to color than a constant attack of riffage. But the real big moment for me (and for regular readers that know me, this next statement will be shocking) is the solo guitar work near the end of the song. Insanely well picked in-and-outs of harmonies and singular voiced lines and almost deathly intimate ringing chord arpeggios give this a completely different aura than the normal blazing fare of solos that tend to be a time-to-get-some-water moment for me instead of an ear-perking moment. While writing this explanation of the solo I put it on repeat 5 more times because it’s just so tasty.
Honestly this album doesn’t have a lot of flaws to speak of except I felt more could have happened, especially with what I felt I was given in my recommended tracks. Especially the use of the acoustic guitar in a lot of places really flavored this album well and helped it stand out, but at times I felt like the band themselves were forgetting how well that was working for them. What holds this album back is that I think the shining moments spoiled me into knowing the whole album really could be that. Overall though, the complete mastery of the mood presented on the cover along with the great use of drum changes and bass countering to the riffs melodically really stands out. This is a fantastic album for those into the unafraid-to-be-melodic techy death bands as well as fans of anything blackened or darkened in nature.
Recommended tracks: Vast Forest of Impaled Cadavers, Inhumation, Amongst Horrors I Must Dwell
Recommended for fans of: Revocation, Necrophagist, Obscura
Final verdict: 7.5/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page
Label: Independent
Unflesh is:
– Ryan Beevers (Vocals, Guitars)
– Orin Hubbard (Bass)
– Jeff Saltzman (Drums)
