Band: The Undivine (Finland) Album: Rise to Command (2010, EP) Genre: Death Metal with some punk In my mailbox a short while ago: extreme metal from Finland. The Undivine, from the town of Lohja, “stabs you in the face real hard”, as they put it themselves. Since their start in 2005, they have released one demo and two EPs. Rise to Command came out in 2010 and I’ve let it assault my eardrums for a while. How is it? By Niek

The five-piece band starts off their latest EP in a very promising way: with the track I Will Overcome, introduced by epic-sounding tunes. It quickly picks up the pass however. A nice full, deep sound and tremolo picking in the chorus. Deeper Death Metal growls in the verses and more agonized screams in the choruses, closing in on black metal vocals. And, a nice mutually reinforcing relationship between the different instruments. In short, the total is more than the sum of its parts.

In the second track, Guilt is the Wage of Success, drums and rhythm guitars show strong inspiration taken from the punk genre. Down with the Napalm Rain, on the other hand, features a more old-school setting. And the fourth track is different yet again. Still, there is sufficient unity over the full EP to not make it an inconsistent mash-up.

Rise to Command contains four tracks of serious music and then a fifth with two minutes of silence and then some batshit crazy Finnish punk rehearsal. Probably hilarious when you understand the language, but I don’t, so it makes little sense to me.

The fourth track World After Us features a nice ‘n heavy break (it’s a long ending really), with extra deep growls and some angry backing screams. All very nice, but it is I Will Overcome, with its groovy Death Metal verses and darker, tormented black metal-like choruses, that convinces the most. Though the cherry on top, these chaps don’t save the best for last. Instead they serve it straight in your face. Which is the smart thing to do when you’re looking for a label and thus looking to impress at first sight. Let’s hope their search ends in success soon, because this stuff deserves it!

Grade: 7.5/10
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Tags: death, Finnish, punk, review

This entry was posted on Monday, June 21st, 2010 at 7:32 pm and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.