Everything Is Fire may be the most unsettling listen I have sat through. Actually, sit? No, not sit, a prone rigor mortis stature is more accurate. To most eclectic listeners (occasionally putting a toe in the bubbling raw sewage that is modern death metal), these songs will seem nihilistic epics with a little Luc Lemay flair. Although, for those whose minds have become accustomed to methodical arrangements of showy technical (safe) death metal, this is a disconcerting brew of plodding sludge while simultaneously outplaying any other band in terms of speed and intensity; Everything Is Fire is many things, often all at once. Death Metal may be dangerous again.

It is by the time you reach the mournful interlude in “Withered And Obsolete” that you get over the fact Ulcerate are pretty interesting and start really feeling something from this album. No, it is not a touching moment, or even a breath of air from the encircling madness; it has nothing to prove… This is abstract death metal at it’s finest. Everything Is Fire does not waste time by infusing audacious and attention grabbing shticks, no, that would imply that it cares if you notice its existence; It is a whispered floating leviathan, moving independently. Picture it as an obscene thing hanging in the sky, approach it, know madness…

Gone are the violent fragments, jarring riffs, and urgent rhythms to be found on previous album Of Fracture and Failure. “Drown Within” spends careful time and economical speed establishing its theme, its direction, and its point; each song is superfluously streamlined. The mix enables all the recorded elements to coagulate as a single monstrous mass, the vocals seemingly erupting out of the inharmonious crust. Nothing is accidental, nothing is skipped over; it feels like doom album. It feels like a sludge album. However, make no mistake, this is death metal; bleak, scorched, and scarred death metal. The fascinating element lies in the fact that this New Zealand band is not glorifying such an obviously bleak overtone; “Tyranny” has behaviour, and intrigue. “The Earth At Its Knees” is dripping with story and detail. Top tier musicianship (and Jamie St. Merat’s staggering writing for the percussion section) shuns the sentimental chops of their contemporaries and is put to work at building a self contained world. Everything Is Fire is a civilization, a dynasty, a cave painting in a rockslide.

Yes, this album is a brilliant singular work, and it would be unlikely to find a death metal album that is as viscerally textured as this in 2009. The experience is militantly cohesive, where any form of variance is non existent; this may give an impression of extensive similarity between tracks upon first spin, but attacking this at intervals proves to shed light on the eschewing diversity. An album such as this relies on it’s own merits over the listener’s assumptions and expectations regarding it’s genre. It is one of a kind, it is dangerous; handle with care.

(8.8/10)