Deceased... - Fearless Undead Machines (1997)^{Release ID: 4103}

Deceased's seemingly legendary concept album based on Romero's zombie movies, as they existed in the late '90s. The dead walk the Earth again, killing and eating everyone they can get their hands on. Something that humanity would easily be able to bounce back from if we could stop arguing about pointless crap for 5 minutes.
These guys are not the kind of band who should make long concept albums. Firstly, we get several interludes which add nothing to the music. I'm not really sure there IS an album improved by some dude talking for 2 minutes in the middle of it. Further, I'm not really sure that what death metal was missing was songs with about 8 riffs going on for 8 minutes. There's a very tedious aspect to this album because of it. Growly choruses that go on forever are not my favorite thing in the world.
While the album gets a lot better as it goes on, I can't help but think of this album as not knowing what it wants to do. The band jumps all over the place from drop and gritty death metal to Maiden-worship with some growls. There's some good stuff in here, but I got some serious tonal whiplash at times.
Speaking of tonal whiplash, the lyrics. These get weird. It's not quite the full tonal whiplash Romero's films would eventually get with zombies are actually the good guys, but it is out there. It goes through the expected arc of a zombie story, fleeing from zombies, fighting them, and eventually scientists trying to figure out how to cure it...and then the protagonist gets bitten and dies in Unhuman Drama. The final two songs involve him becoming part of some kind of zombie hive mind. It's a trip.
I'm not really sure how I feel about the album in the end. It's very all over the place.

Thrash Metal was in a sorry state in the late 90’s. Most prominent Thrash bands got infected by the Groove virus or fizzled out into softer styles, and not many new bands were popping up. More extreme and experimental styles of Metal were running both the underground and the mainstream.

But of course, you still got bands like Deceased, who played unrelenting Deathrash in an undisguised love letter to the 80’s. The album is absolutely ripping, full of fantastic riffs and very well composed, lengthy songs. It’s got a Heavy Metal influence, and integrates slower, more melodic portions between the aggression, making the songs varied and effective at maintaining intrigue despite the lengths.

It’s also a concept album about zombies based on the Night of the Living Dead series. How fun is that? I’m also gonna shout out the vocalist Fowley, who not only has a perfect hybrid Thrash yell/Deathgrowl, but is also the drummer! And the drums kick ass! This was pretty much as good as the genre got at that point in time. Never given enough credit or limelight, Deceased remain an underground treasure, but they deserve much more because this is up there with the best of the Deathrash bands.