Extreme metal has an orthodoxy problem. I find it most present in black metal, where adherence to the extremely old and cold ways is something celebrated instead of viewed as redundant and wholly unnecessary (laughably so in a genre as much about elitism and shrugging off of herd mentality as black metal oft claims to be). Yet all stripes of metal have their moments of complacency, of clinging to the path of least resistance, even death metal. It’s adherence to form is not nearly as strictly held as black metal, but death metal by and large, I find, is content to be death metal; unchanged and unbothered by change. Every now and then you get an album like Ulcerate’s Stare Into Death and Be Still that radically shakes up the genre and opens up new possibilities, but those albums are few and far in between, and honestly, it’s mostly fine; I find an OK death metal album a lot more enjoyable to listen to than an OK black metal album. But the older I get, and the longer I involve myself in the world of extreme metal, the more of those special, groundbreaking albums I hear, and the more I long to focus my time and patience listening to the music that truly speaks to me. Black metal has no shortage of genre-defying artists these days, and doom can get suitably weird with it too. So where does that leave death metal you ask? Why, in the capable hands of Dream Unending, and the brand new album Song of Salvation, that’s where.