Undeath Rise From the Grave For Another Murderous Offering (Interview)
Rochester, New York’s Undeath has generated a hefty buzz within the underground death metal scene in just a few short years. Formed in 2018, the filthy quintet has experienced a prolific writing and recording period in their fledgling career so far. From its frantic and filthy 2019 demo to its more mature debut full-length album Lesions of A Different Kind—not to mention another demo, split. and compilation in between—the band has grown exponentially with each release. On its ripping sophomore full-length album, It’s Time…To Rise From the Grave, Undeath has upped the ante and have created a real banger.
Writing for It’s Time…To Rise From the Grave had already begun before the launch of the band’s previous album Lesions of A Different Kind was even released, putting Undead way ahead of the game.
“I think that’s kind of been the modus operandi for Undeath since we started, we just try to stay ahead of the curve,” Undeath vocalist Alexander Jones said during a recent Zoom chat, “and it’s not out of any sense of obligation or anything like that, it’s just because we love writing. We love practicing, we love just getting in the space and just feeling out riffs and just jamming together. It’s always been our prerogative to stay as busy as possible. So it feels great.”
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Plus, thanks to the COVID Pandemic causing a stoppage on touring, the band had even more time to create exactly what they wanted.
“I think COVID happening definitely changed our plans a little bit. I know it affected a lot of bands a lot worse than it affected us. There’s plenty of bands out there that have massive touring schedules plotted out and then COVID hit and they had to cancel months and months worth of tours. But for us… we had one, three/four-week long tour that was in the process of being booked. And we were already writing this new album on the side while that was being booked. So when COVID hit and that tour was out of the question, it was pretty natural just to pivot to writing 100 percent of the time. So it definitely freed up some time for us, but we were already pretty deep in the writing game at that point, so it wasn’t that drastic of an adjustment.”
With It’s Time…To Rise From the Grave being Undeath’s second album in a little less than two years, the band has been rather prolific. They seem to never be at a loss for new material.
“Kyle [Beam] and the other guys in the band—specifically Kyle—he’s just like a machine when it comes to writing. He’s constantly spending his days just working on new riffs and sending them to us. And especially now that we’ve got Tommy [Wall], our bass player, and Jared [Welch], our other guitar player in the band, we’ve got three dudes in the band who are constantly churning out new riffs and ideas. We’re always working on stuff. So it’s just fun, really, that’s really what it comes down to. It’s just fun to stay busy and it’s just fun to keep writing this kind of music. So we’re going to keep doing it for as long as we can!”
It’s easy to hear how much Undeath has grown musically from the release of its first demo to its newest full-length album. The songwriting has become stronger, the band has become tighter, and Alex’s vocal skills are much more commanding. His vocal patterns are easy to follow and are sometimes delivered with quick phrases to fit the rhythmic pattern. Plus, the outstanding drumming from Matt Browning (who also created the stunning album cover art) is decorated with massive, double kick cannon-like patterns.
“I think as a band, we’ve really honed in on what we want to sound like at this point, because I think with the demos, especially the first demo and then Sentient Autolysis, the second demo, we were experimenting with a lot of stuff. We were just kind of throwing a lot of shit together and seeing what worked, and by the time we got to Lesions…, the first album, I think we really started to notice some stuff about Undeath that we liked the most. I think that was evident in the title track, and I think that was evident in songs like “Lord of the Grave,” songs like “Entranced by the Pendulum.” We liked writing songs that had big hooks, had big choruses, had at least one or two huge, catchy riffs right at the centerpiece of the song. So once we realized how much fun it was to play that stuff and how compelling it was to write that kind of stuff, we just doubled down on it for the next record. I think with this new one, we’ve kind of reached a point where we’re more familiar than ever with what the Undeath sound is. Looking forward into the future, it’s very exciting to think about where this band can go next, because now that we know what our toolbox is, I feel like the possibilities are endless for us at this point in terms of what we can do with this band.”
Having a compatible camaraderie and great musical chemistry in a band is paramount to its creativity. Since forming in 2018, the core members of Alex, Kyle and drummer Matt Browning, with bassist Tommy and other guitarist Jared joining in 2020, the lineup is pretty solid according to Alex.
“The camaraderie is great. The sense of partnership in the band is awesome, because none of us have huge egos—and if any of us do, I think we do a really good job of hiding it—but I think we’re all pretty low key, relaxed individuals for the most part. So it creates a very welcome and patient dynamic in the band. We’re all here for the same reason. We’re all here to take this band as far as we can, but also just have fun while we’re doing it.”
Undeath first flirted with hooky riffs and massive choruses on their previous album. On this one, they came back even stronger by creating easily-chantable choruses and hummable riffs and lead guitar melodies that will be stuck in your head long after entering the eardrums. No riff is wasted throughout the album’s 36-minute runtime, giving it an extremely high replay value.
“We had tons of conversations before we actually started recording the album, where we were just talking about the way that we wanted people to experience it. We wanted people to come away from the album humming the riffs. We want people to walk away from the album just wanting to listen to it again, immediately. We wanted it to have that instant replay value. We wanted the songs to stick in your head for a long time. I think with this record specifically, we just wanted to create an album that you can sing along to that was catchy. That was definitely one of the primary goals in mind for sure.”
Due to COVID, no one was playing shows during that almost two year time period. However, since Covid restrictions dropped off, Undeath has been playing quite a few shows and are already booked for most of 2022.
“Tommy and Jared joined the band during COVID. I think our first actual performance with them was the Legions of a Different Kind live stream release show in October of 2020 from a venue in DC, but there was nobody there, but since then, we’ve played a ton with our full lineup. We did a full US tour with The Black Dahlia Murder. We did a week of shows in November of 2021. We just got back from 11 days of shows in March. We’re doing a full US/Canada tour in a month with Dying Fetus. We’ve been busy and we’ve got a ton of stuff booked for the rest of the year. We played a lot together and we’re definitely planning on continuing to play a lot together in the future for sure.”
With good reviews coming in for its latest album and praise being given to the band from various national and International magazines, things are happening rather rapidly for Undeath at this early stage of their career. For the rest of 2022 and beyond, the band has big hopes and achievements to fulfill.
“Leading up to everything that’s happened with Undeath, all I ever really wanted musically was to be in a band that could achieve this kind of success. I wanted to be in a band that could tour steadily and not go completely broke while doing it. The fact that Undeath has achieved that now is amazing, and I’m grateful for that every day, and I think for the future, I’m trying to strike this balance where I want to take it as far as I can. I want Undeath to accomplish many things. I want to try to keep getting bigger with it, but at the same time, I want to stay grounded. I want to stay humble and I want to just stay present and enjoy what’s happening while it’s happening.”
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It’s Time…To Rise From the Grave was released on April 1st, 2022 via Prosthetic Records.
You can pick up a cornflower blue variant of the new LP at the BV shop.
