Review by Nathan on April 7, 2020.

My expectations for this album were unreasonably high before a second of it passed through my ears. Ulcerate are titans of modern death metal, constantly staying at the front of the pack with their inventive embrace of dissonance, atmosphere and dynamics. They were one of the first of their kind, and their influence looms large, commanding a level of respect equivalent to that of Deathspell Omega in the black metal spectrum. In case having a game-changing style wasn’t enough, Ulcerate are also constantly reinventing themselves with each new album, adjusting their scope and changing the tonal delivery radically. They have more deliberate, paced albums and chaotic, nearly incoherent ones, with some coming through with clarity and subtleties and some albums being delivered through a mix caked in filth. I may have a high bar for anything this group puts out, but it’s only because they’ve repeatedly proven they can clear it.

Sure enough, Ulcerate has once again examined their already-groundbreaking sound through a fresh lens. On Stare into Death and Be Still, the riffs cut through with a fresh, crystalline sheen, a sudden shift from the turgid murkiness that defined their last couple of releases. While their trademark dissonant bending is still very frequently present, the band fully dives into experimentation with an off-kilter sense of melody that is more frequently seen in French black metal along the lines of Blut Aus Nord, Deathspell Omega and Aosoth, combined with what I suspect is Icelandic black metal a la Svartidaudi and Wormlust for that harrowing yet beautiful touch. Because Ulcerate are masters of their craft, and already exist in close proximity to the styles they’re drawing from, they’re able to weave their atmospheres into the fabric of their sound effortlessly. 'Visceral Ends' may be as consonant as this band has ever sounded, but it still very much has the Ulcerate vibe, and I’ll be damned if they don’t get some fantastic results out of the fresh textures.

Because I don’t think he gets as much credit as he should, I also have to give credit for Jamie Saint Merat for being one of the most breathtaking and versatile drummers in all of extreme metal. He’s got plenty of speedy chops and intricate fills up his sleeve, but the real magic in his rhythm work is his incredible sense of dynamics. Unlike a lot of drummers, Saint Merat is extremely adept at knowing when to fade into the background and let the space between the drum hits do the talking. A great example is actually in the first track, 'The Lifeless Advance', where after a fittingly overwhelming stamina exercise on the snare, Saint Merat slides into a simpler, more spaced-out beat just a hair before the rest of the riff gets there, immersing you in a moment with an incredible amount of layers given how sparse it is. The amount of ground that track covers is remarkable, and it just might be my favorite on the album - but that’s also because I’m just super excited that I still have seven more tracks to listen to after it. Simply put, Saint Merat is one of the best drummers you’ll ever hear, and let’s not overlook the fact that he has also mixed and mastered every single one of the band’s albums to date, which is likely a huge factor in why each of them has a distinct identity.

Even within their little sonic experiment, the amount of ground this covers is remarkable - whereas some of their other album were just a tad limited by the tunnel vision focus on a certain element (for example Vermis’ concentration of atmosphere, or the constant muddy chaos of Shrines of Paralysis), Stare into Death and Be Still always seems to have a new direction to take, invigorated by the new well of influences the band’s taking from. Every track has at least two masterful rise-and-falls filled with excellent, extra-tasty riffs, with an injection of some more delicate emotions that the band shows hints of before but seem to be riding into full bloom.

With Shrines of Paralysis, I enjoyed it just fine, but over time I found myself neglecting the release, preferring to instead listen to earlier albums. I was starting to worry that Ulcerate would begin to rest on their laurels after a decade of breaking new ground in death metal, but Stare Into Death and Be Still crushes all of those fears within three minutes of the opening track. The switch from Relapse to Debemur Morti for a release partner seems less like a logistics decision and more an intentional artistic choice on the part of the band in order to properly convey their ideological shift. Although modern black metal influence has never been entirely absent from Ulcerate’s sound, it’s more at the forefront on this new album, and the result is the most fresh and exciting album this band has had since Everything is Fire. The kings of modern death metal have once again shown why they deserve the throne.

Rating: 9.2 out of 10

Review by Alex on June 19, 2020.

Enter the vessel and prepare for a space geodesy when you get your hands-on Chaos Over Cosmos' second full length album, The Ultimate Multiverse. Having always been a supporter of progressive metal but rarely finding the time to highlight a few bands, after hearing this album, I refused to let the opportunity slip-away. I think my gravitation to the sub-genre was aided by the video games I started playing in the early 2000s; Betty Bad, Dark Orbit and a bunch of titles from Wild Tangent really molded my interest in real science and science fiction through the worlds those games presented for adventure and the ambient music that accompanied them. But to hear metal bands give musical representations of themes rooted in science fiction and video games could be just as exhilarating and adventurous as playing a video game of that nature.

The Ultimate Multiverse resurrects feelings of getting tossed into some random place in space or a planet unknown to man and even incites nostalgia, making you wish you still had your HP Pavilion PC with those trial version video games that came with it. Its combination of highly catchy melodies, darkly ambient revealing keyboard atmospheres and guitar solos telling of a nomadic drift outer space, reconnects the listener with his/her inner child. I haven't enjoyed a progressive metal album this much since first hearing Synthetic Breed's Perpetual Motion Machine, and while The Ultimate Multiverse is different from that album (at least on a technical level), I can't help listening to it repeatedly as I would that of Synthetic Breed's.

I could take songs like 'Cascading Darkness' and 'One Hundred' and use them as theme music for Dark Orbit or even Dreadnought. The keyboard synth is on-point as far as launching you into these wondrous all the while shadowy atmospheres mantling the music as heard on previously mentioned 'Cascading Darkness', that at the same time, has enough room to facilitate the progressive reciprocation occurring. Take a song like 'One Hundred' or 'Worlds Apart' and strip away a single feature at a time and you'd still get a fairly serviceable piece of music due to the competent and high concentrates of any select element. Progressive and ambient stretches ignite and engage in a matrimony that'd directly affect the appearance of a song. Then they're so many instances of the vocals being interchanged and strategically swapped to amplify an effect that you could really struggle trying to parenthesize the music as a whole. You'd get that feeling on 'Consumed' that really starts reaching for the skies so to speak in terms of the juggle between clean vocals, death growls and those post-core screams, all the while frequently masking its appearance through the musical diversity.

The drums are programmed; however, I did not identify this immediately because of the human element attached to it. The sequences don't sound as though they can't be replicated live by a real person; instead, though being computerized, the drumming maintains technical organic-ism and/or believable functionality. The riffing is phenomenal, select any solo and it'd qualify as a highlight on The Ultimate Multiverse. Those power and progressive metal guitars battle it out on we 'We Will Not Fall', delivering a jaw-dropping dose of six-stringed ecstasy. The Ultimate Multiverse is out of this world! I'd highly recommend this for anyone that enjoys Animals As Leaders, Devin Townsend Project or even non-metal stuff like DarWin. The Ultimate Multiverse invades all orbits and hemispheres via Narcoleptica Productions June 20th, 2020.

Rating: 8.8 out of 10