Unfathomable Ruination – Enraged and Unbound (Review)

This is the third album from UK death metallers Unfathomable Ruination.

Enraged and Unbound is a contains a monstrous 43 minutes of brutal, technical death metal.

This is a very satisfying, enjoyable, and accomplished slab of punishment. The band have clearly worked hard on this, with the songwriting and delivery receiving a high amount of scrutiny before passing stringent quality checks. This is passionate, dynamic, energised, and absolutely destructively moreish.

For something as mercilessly nasty as this, there’s a surprising amount of catchy material and barbed hooks here; gruesome riffs, subtle bloody melodies, and virulent structuring mean each song is as infectious as a weaponised pathogen. As well as grooving brutality and blasting carnage, both enhanced with breakneck time changes and technical workouts, there’s a progressive streak hidden in the mayhem which enriches the music no end. This allows elements of subtlety and nuance to emerge in parts of the songs; rare indeed for an album as relentlessly harsh as this one.

The vocals are primarily inhuman growls, with serrated screams and other styles mixed in here and there. They’re the perfect form of vocals for an album like this. The album also features guest vocals from the singers of Aborted and Benighted too, which adds to the wider vocal appeal.

Although there have a been some great death metal albums released this year, I haven’t been too impressed with the vast bulk of death metal output in 2019. Enraged and Unbound is one of the main exceptions to this, however, and an extreme metal exemplar of high quality music.