Deceased - Fearless Undead Machines
Review: Death metal heads Deceased have long impressed with their precise music delivered in the exacting style of masters Voivod or Judas Priest, which despite having heavy overtones of romanticized or sentimental music is demanding high-speed heavy metal of the outlaw biker school taken to musical extremes. The satisfying factor from beginning to end of this album, if you have the gene to digest its family of music, is adherence to the aesthetic and necessarily corresponding philosophy of heavy metal in a tighter, awakened context of intensity in time and structure.
Slayer comes to mind as another influence through the breakdown of much of the heavy metal aesthetic through more decentralized and rhythmically abrasive music. Raw aggression here turns to a martial art of studied discipline in a dance that, although well known, has become a cultural language which can be manipulated in terms of itself to achieve a separate art form. With slightly-hoarse death style shouted vocals and boxlike blast drumming as well as limber strumming precision synchronized guitars, these guys come from the death metal camp of content creator but can speak the language old to both commercial and underground metal yet still relevant: the lawless, morbid, rebellious spirit of heavy metal.
Instrumental performance is elegant and impressively cogent within the context of each song and the thematic cohesion provided by lyrics centering around the meta-topic of zombified earthlings serving alien races and their penchant for "motorized instinct," an evocative metaphor for the waking slumber and obedience of modern society; the riff salads that are the songs while not entirely progressively linked use speed metal technical skill to unify abstract and far-ranged tempos and combine the different directions of multiple riffs from several generations of metallions. Especially for those who appreciated 1993's release of Doomstone's Those Whom Satan Hath Joined by a related project of this band, "Fearless Undead Machines" is heavy metal pleasure in a logical contemporary framework.