Ulcerate played Sonia – 11/12

New Zealand death metal exports Ulcerate hit Cambridge last month with support from Obsidian Tongue and Spirit Possession.

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I didn’t get out to a whole lot of shows this past month – wedding, honeymoon, holidays will do that – but a mid-November date with New Zealand’s preeminent technical death metal marauders Ulcerate seemed like a good moment to duck out of the life chaos and into a different kind of chaos.

Hailing from as far away as they do, Ulcerate don’t make a whole lot of local appearances, and 2020’s Stare Into Death and Be Still and last year’s Cutting the Throat of God (how’s that for a one-two punch of album titles?) are among the standout extreme metal LPs in recent memory for me. The trio’s dissonant, dizzying style is the sort of music that – on record – sort of makes you wonder how people are even capable of playing it, which of course makes it particularly fascinating to watch on stage. Appropriately, last month’s gig was an uncompromising, mind-bending monolith of heaviness, focused heavily on those last two records and transfixing a sold-out room.

Rounding out the bill, Portland, OR’s Spirit Possession banged out some satisfying raw black metal in classic two-piece fashion, while semi-locals Obsidian Tongue (they’re located in the other Portland) took a proggier, spacier approach to the genre.

Check out a gallery of all three bands below.