Undeath - It's Time... to Rise From the Grave (2022)^{Release ID: 36179}

I've mentioned a lot lately just how much I appreciate old school death metal. More specifically, that I feel like technology "improvements" and the expectation of adventurous creativity has resulted in bands often producing highly technical yet fairly soulless music. When I first pressed play on Undeath's new album, I thought my prayers (Satanic rituals?) had been answered. It doesn't get much more old school than this! I figured once these bread and butter beauties got their hooks into me, that I'd be praising this release to the hills, and immediately searching for their previous releases. Sadly, a bunch of listens later, I'm nowhere near as into this as I expected. There are definitely some great riffs, and plenty of time-changing fuckery to keep things interesting, but I just don't think the songwriting matches that of their inspirations (these guys are definitely fans of Morbid Angel and, in particular, Cannibal Corpse). It doesn't keep me excited and pumped the way a good death metal album should. That said, this is well produced and solid death metal that sounds like it came from my favourite era. The fact that I even considered giving it three stars should be a sign that this is just a bit underwhelming. I'll go back to my precious new Immolation album.