Review by Morpheus Kitami for Deceased... - Fearless Undead Machines (1997)

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.