Unhallowed Deliverance – Of Spectres and Strife (Review)

We all have our musical safe space of artists or genres in which we primarily roam about – that is for sure. Even those of you who tend to listen to a very wide span of musical genres. Same goes for me, I have to admit. Especially when it comes to Extreme Metal, or Death Metal to be more precise, I like to immediately go for the less overproduced lo-fi, IQ lowering variants. However, I have still remained vigilant when looking for the overall landscape in the spheres of Death Metal. Especially due to Lower Rhine Underground, I strongly focus on releases from Northrhine-Westphalia. This is also how I came across Unhallowed Deliverance’s Of Spectres and Strife and although this might be considered a little further away from my safe space, it absolutely captured me by storm.

Unhallowed Deliverance is a five-member-outfit hailing from the center of NRW. With Of Spectres and Strife, they immediately went for the release of their full-length debut before messing around with demos or EPs (apart from a single release beforehand). Sometimes, this might be a tough decision because bands could diffuse a sound that has not yet had enough time to mature. To be frank right from the beginning, this certainly was not the case when talking about Unhallowed Deliverance, which also broadcasts the fact that – when taking a look at the musicians that were in charge for this full length debut – we are not talking about artists that found their way into their first band. Unhallowed Deliverance’s drummer Phil and bassist Markus also function as session musicians for local Death Metal act Stillbirth, the latter also being a full member of Diaroe where Unhallowed Deliverance’s guitarist Szymon also plays the session guitar.

The album opens off with a warm introduction on “Waking the Spectres” that takes your hand and leads you towards Of Spectres and Strife with beautiful acoustic guitars and spoken words. However, shifting attention towards the actual technicality of the guitars during some of the licks might already work as a hint to predict what is about to follow. Nevertheless, bands often mistreat first tracks like these so that you tend to blank out the opening of the album – I came back to this track several times, though, especially because of the amazing guitar work. With no time to waste, “They Will Eat Us Raw” then immediately blasts straightforward Death Metal right into your face at full volume. I have to admit that this is already one of the special tracks on this album to me. The progression from beginning to end is incredibly strong and instantly portrays numerous strengths that this band brings across. The rhythmical progression from start to finish is one of the most salient aspects that will catch your attention on this track first of all. Building off of a slow beginning, the drums work towards faster playstyles through different sequences, eventually arriving at your first blast beats after the first third of the track. The versatile guitar work finishes off these sequences, perfectly adapting to whatever pattern the drums work through. After this first track, you already know that technical precision is the thing that will deform your ear canals on this entire release. At this point, though, we have not yet talked about the substances Unhalllowed Deliverance’s bassist Markus has to be on. Make sure to listen to this album at high volume so to be able to fully enjoy this bass racing through almost every track – when I listened to “They Will Eat Us Raw” and arrived at the final third of the track, I had to get back to this bass work numerous times. 

What I favored a lot about “They Will Eat Us Raw” and the entire album is the amount of genre bending that takes place. The entire album is spot-on Death Metal, sure thing – and we don’t get any implementation of elements that are driven far-off. However, what’s happening on this entire album is what I’d like to call micro-genre bending. In between the uncountable subgenres that take place under the moniker of Death Metal, Unhallowed Deliverance manage to cherry pick stylistic devices and piece them together with what can eventually be denoted their very specific style. On this first track, we get a glimpse of what is going to follow throughout the entire album. Starting off with what might be considered rather “regular” Death Metal patterns, we run through sequences that primarily pick off technical elements on the strings and spice things up with moments of Brutal Death Metal, finishing off with just the right amount of Slam to crush this insanely memorable track right into your face. When taking a look at the Slam sequences on this album, I think that this is one of the subtle overarching, recurring playstyles that take place on a larger share of the tracks on this album – possibly pointing at the spheres where these musicians are coming from. Apart from that, technicality also remains omnipresent on pretty much all of the tracks that comes along with breathtaking precision, heavily underlining the impact of what is happening on the strings. Additionally, though, tracks such as “We Slither” or “Devil in the Basement” put emphasis on old school thrashy Death Metal with regards to the riffing. The fourth track “Treatise on the Lowest Form of Man” fully submerges in Technical Death Metal that brings forth strong reminiscence of The Black Dahlia Murder. The fifth track “Hope Drowning” then switches again, spicing things up with a tendency towards what might be considered Dissonant Death Metal in the veins of recent representatives such as Altars or similars. As you can see from this attempt to portray the versatile songwriting of Unhallowed Deliverance, the strength of this album definitely derives from its vast variety. Even the general framework of the song structures is an element Unhallowed Deliverance easily deconstruct when either going for a linear track structure on quite a lot of the tracks on this album but also implementing tracks such as the aforementioned “Treatise on the Lowest Form of Man” that follows a rather “traditional” pattern going by the back and forth between verse and chorus. I really enjoyed being refreshed like that halfway through the album. These are all elements that showcase the fact that Unhallowed Deliverance did everything right deciding to go right off towards the self-release of their full-length debut. There is a hell of a lot of sense for details on every possible level.

Although the sonical elements on this album alone would be a sufficient reason to justify introductions into many year-end-lists, it is also necessary to take a closer look at the subjects that are addressed on this album. The bold and heavily packed technicality that can be heard on all of the tracks on Of Spectres and Strife strongly reminded me of Archspire especially on their latest album. Having seen that several of the band members also name this band as inspiration, I was able to connect the dots. However, another band that popped up in my mind while listening was Cattle Decapitation, which eventually also turned out to be quite a fitting band to come up with when trying to grasp the overall focus of Unhallowed Deliverance. To anyone of you who has listened to at least one album by Cattle Decapitation, it probably doesn’t come as a surprise that – let’s say – environmental issues (generally speaking) caused by mankind are a major drive of the lyrical content of their music. When getting a little deeper into Unhallowed Deliverance’s tracks, it doesn’t take too long to find out that there is also a strong focus on calamities that are primarily caused or impacted by mankind. Heading off with the great “They Will Eat Us Raw” I absolutely enjoyed the fact that you dive into this album going by the impression that this songtitle denotes the act of cannibalism. We’re listening to Death Metal, right? When reading the lyrics, though, and following a little further down the line, it becomes clearer that this is not the case. Frankly, this is a glimpse into the daily business of a slaughterhouse, taken from the perspective of one of the animals. Shifting the point of view immediately switches from daily business to horror experience, craftily emphasizing the atrocities that take place here. On “Treatise on the Lowest Form of Man,” though, the focus is not on the end product that is caused by malicious men (male form intended), but rather on exactly those men who cause terrible circumstances, politically speaking. When you’re delivered versatile and convincing Tech Death that enacts a genre roundhouse kick – and this music is even underlined with genuine social criticism that does not feel as if it just repeats ever-mentioned perspectives – this is just great. 

I’ve underlined the versatility of songwriting, guitars, bass and drums tremendously already but we have not yet talked about the vocals that are the key element to tie together this adventure through Death Metal subgenres. Vocalist Arthur manages to go from different varieties of deep lows in the vein of Brutal Death or Slam over “regular” Death Metal growls up to ferocious highs and even Hardcore-ish shouts or vocal balancing of what comes quite close to the well-known Cattle Decapitation goblin vocals. When straying through some of the most diverse incarnations of Death Metal, the variety of vocals on top of these styles perfectly underline the intended sound. This is just massive.

I was most definitely caught by surprise when I first listened to this album. I was even surprised that I got hooked so much on Tech Death, since this does not happen too often. However, it definitely is versatility that I’m looking for when browsing through music, and Unhallowed Deliverance are capable of conveying this on top-notch level. Unhallowed Deliverance entered the game, heavily demonstrating a level of skill that will overtake a hell of a lot of contenders. With their s e l f – r e l e a s e d debut! How is this band not yet signed? I don’t get it. Labels should get into cage fights to get their hands on what these guys are doing.