In terms of of global impact , UK death metal has never quite achieved the mecca-esque status of Florida or Sweden, despite turning out its share of notorious heavyweights (the global landscape would look very different without the all too relevant contributions of Carcass and Bolt Thrower after all) . As with most countries you could care to name however, the underground is continually teeming with new talent touting the merits of both stridently old school filth and fearless ingenuity, with London brutes Unfathomable Ruination doing more than most to hold aloft our fair isle’s blood-flecked extreme metal flag.
Coming across like a head-on collision between Origin‘s swivel eyed tech and the inky-black atmospherics of Immolation, the quintet’s third full length is a truly monstrous slab of sonic brutality. Pitching their sound somewhere between a unique strain of descent-into-madness complexity (‘Fibres’) and a more succinct, groove driven approach (‘Protoplasmic Imprisonment’), Enraged and Unbound delivers all the guttural horror of the genres best whilst chucking in a host of subtle detours, whether it be the steadily collapsing, slo-mo descent of ‘A Prophetic Compulsion’ or the frequent bursts of six-string pyrotechnics.
It is all thoroughly unpleasant stuff, and for the most part clatters along on an undercurrent of pitiless hell-blasting and state-of-the-art savagery. Couple this with some flashes of genuine dynamic gumption, and the ungodly miasma of Enraged and Unbound proves to be compelling evidence that Unfathomable Ruination are one of the most remorselessly extreme death metal bands operating in the scene today.
Enraged and Unbound is released 22nd November via Willowtip Records and can be purchased here.
Words: Tony Bliss
