In the 1970s, Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Lynn Swann set the NFL on fire with a previously unseen level of nimble athleticism. Once his accomplishments began to prompt high-profile interviews, their headlines largely focused on one unique aspect of Swann’s background: This star of America’s roughest, most physical sport was a trained ballet dancer. Many other aspiring pro footballers have turned to ballet in years since, all looking to gain an edge via the artform’s intricate footwork and body control.
Rochester, New York’s Undeath play old-school death metal, a style of music whose public reputation mirrors football’s: aggressive and physically taxing, but perhaps not graceful. It’s also a genre with a sizable contingent that resists too much innovation. While many of death metal’s originators have survived for decades without diversifying their sound, younger bands often sound stale while trying to recapture the magic that Florida and Gothenburg produced in the ’90s. But on Undeath’s first two albums, they reinvigorated the style’s hallmarks without reinventing the wheel, thanks to their knack for memorable composition. On More Insane, their third album, Undeath show what Swann’s athletic approach might look like applied to the genre, using fluid dexterity to enhance their heaviness.
The album’s loose narrative follows survivors of a nuclear-driven zombie apocalypse who resort to increasingly grotesque methods to save humanity. Most memorably, as Jones sings on ”Sutured for War,” this involves a form of body modification: stitching corpses to oneself to wield “auxiliary limbs and weapons galore.” This imagery mirrors Undeath’s treatment of various existing modes of death metal on More Insane. ’90s Florida still has firm grasp on the reins, but Swedish melo-death, punk-influenced d-beat, wankier ’80s guitar heroics, and mathier passages in the Mastodon/Lamb Of God tradition pop up to deliver kill-shots—all of which Undeath deploy with tasteful finesse.
Undeath have already proven themselves masters of infectious, straightforward death metal bangers. On the heels of 2022’s It’s Time… To Rise From the Grave, which tightened their sound by stripping it down to its essential elements, More Insane shows the band spicing up their formula. There’s nothing here that would sound out of place on the last album, but the new record’s best songs recognize the boredom that might set in after two verses and choruses of even the most skillful OSDM, and subsequently dazzle in their respective final thirds.
