Album Review: Mutated Earth by UnKured

From The Pit – Music and Show Reviews

By Mike Ritchie

Cincinnati’s UnKured Band may have been born a few decades too late. From the sounds of their debut album Mutated Earth they were heavily influenced with a very healthy dose of late 80’s early 90’s death/thrash metal. Besides insane speed-freak frantic fret work, enough to make the strings say ‘goddamn it, slow the f- down!’ the album also has the learned and practiced feel of progression carefully timed and inserted to compliment and ‘accelerate’ if that’s possible, the finger bleeding solos.

For all intents and purposes this ‘could have been’ made in Florida, early 90’s around the same time Sepultura started their Arise to world territory. There’s a heavy spread of Pestilence with some of Obituary’s rotting ways and a loud, respectful stylistic tribute to Death and Uncle Chuck’s handy work. They’ve modernized the sounds of Tampa’s chaos bringing it to modern day listeners who ‘might’ not have been around back then.

With a mentally overloading amount of complex technical-death and speed mixed with thrash and prog and melody, it’s intelligent with guitar and bass telling their break neck stories without trying to overplay. Cody Knarr- Guitar/Vocals, Ben Stanton- Bass and Adam Green-Drums are The UnKured.

“Mutated Earth” opens with a thunderous thrash beat. Let the shredding scorch the earth with death metal growls, old school metal brutality brought from ‘down south’. At 6:38, guitars are fast, strong but not overly long. If the saying ‘the first song on the album defines the band’s sound’ then it’s an UnKured ass kicking from the start.

“A Call from Eternity” is an interesting idea to put an instrumental as the second track on a debut but it seems to work hitting a proggy thrash vibe, summoning Opeth and Mastodon and could be their “Cosmic Sea” on the way to “Voice of the Soul”, if they record another.

“They live, We Sleep” has some deep throated growls with a grotesquely pleasant taste/feel of Pestilence speeding up the chase of the metal death race. They give a few fun winks to 80’s era Slayer on “Into Crumbling Ruins” and the spirit of Mercyful Fate/King Diamond are in the guitars on “Cells”.

“Anti-Terraforming” takes planetary manhandling prog into the thrash yard. “Twisted and Warped” is their seven and a half minute final brutal opening statement, for now.

Mutated Earth can be scavenged here on November 4th. http://unkured2.bandcamp.com/album/mutated-earth, also Follow Them on Facebook – UnKured-Band

 

Read more from the pit articles and reviews by Mike Ritchie on his web site www.coveringthescene.com

 

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