There’s something truly satisfying about a death metal band fully coming into its own. Particularly in an oversaturated musical landscape — where plenty of young bands can show promise, but far fewer are ever able to truly capitalize on it — a band that manages to fully “take the leap” on a new release can make even this Grinchiest of metal hearts grow three sizes.

Think of what Horrendous did on Anareta, or what Tomb Mold did on Manor of Infinite Forms. (Yes, they were fantastic *well before* The Enduring Spirit, thankyouverymuch.) Starting tomorrow, you can add Undeath to that list. The band’s new album, More Insane, is, to put it gently, fuckin’ great. It absolutely obliterates what we thought was their ceiling, and instantly catapults them up a tier or three.

To be clear, Undeath didn’t need this, per se. The Rochester crew wasn’t, like, teetering on the knife-edge of “good” or “not good” or anything Their previous effort, 2022’s It’s Time… To Rise from the Grave, was comfortably good. Very good, even. It wound up on more than one end-of-year list here at Nine Circles, thanks to the band’s grisly, punishing blend of death metal. They had promise for days.

But More Insane, friends. Good lord.

Take everything you liked about Undeath previously, and sharpen it. Distill it. Remove all of the impurities from the bodily fluids, and then spew pure, unadulterated pRBCs — that’s “packed red blood cells,” for those of you not in the medical field — all over a hoard of unsuspecting victims. That’s the kind of jump we’re talking about here.

Where once the band might have sounded a bit more bass-heavy, they’re now as jagged as buzzsaws. Where their riffs might have been a bit more lumbering and conventional, they’ve since become lithe and articulate. Everything and everyone in the band has simply gone up a level, to the point that it almost feels like a completely different band.

Just listen to the early album cut, “Brandish the Blade,” and try to describe it as anything other than an absolute adventure. A surprisingly melodic intro gives way to a filthy tornado of double bass and guttural bellows from vocalist Alexander Jones. The band briefly lets off the gas for a breakdown, before guitarists Kyle Beam and Jared Welch launch head-first into a harmonized guitar solo. It is, to put it politely, a fuckin’ trip.

More Insane also shows off the band’s skill at incorporating different, disparate elements of death metal into their sound. There’s a great sense of groove, for example, on tracks like “Bounty Hunter”, or the chugged bits of “Cramped Caskets (Necrology)”. Meanwhile, stuff like “Sutured for War” or “Disattachment of a Prophylactic in the Brain” boast both the aforementioned melodic sensibilities, as well as previously untapped levels of technical precision. It’s not full-on “tech death,” per se, but it’s more unhinged than anything we’ve heard from Undeath before.

In the end, More Insane is pretty much the perfect title for this album, because that’s exactly what everything in Undeath land has become. It’s an absolutely exhilarating half hour of all the best bits of death metal, from a band that finds new peaks each time out. Don’t miss this one, folks.

Keep it heavy,
—Dan

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More Insane will be available October 4, 2024, via Prosthetic Records. For more information on Undeath, visit the band’s Facebook page.