The Dead, the Dying and the Dying to be Death Metal
Originally self-released in 2009 in an edition of 100 copies, The Dead’s Ritual Executions now sees an issue 10 times its original breadth thanks to Diabolical Conquest Records, the label imprint of the extreme metal e-zine of the same name. The Brisbane, Australia, trio’s second album, Ritual Executions was remastered by Aphotic Mote of Portal and is a skillful blend of death and doom metal that has enough stoner groove in its riffing to satisfy the one end, and guttural so-called “Cookie Monster” vocals that’d make George “Corpsegrinder” Fischer or Glen Benton proud. It’s not death/doom in the European tradition, which would imply a My Dying Bride or early Paradise Lost kind of pacing and drama, but a rougher take that sews American-style metallic extremity to traditional stonerisms.
Ritual Executions opens with “Burn Your Dead,” a sort of mission statement for the zombie-obsessed The Dead that reaches over eight minutes and culls the aforementioned elements as smoothly as I’ve heard it done. Guitarist/bassist Adam Keleher riffs Electric Wizard-style, but the context for those riffs comes with Mike Yee’s low growling and Chris Morse’s heavy-footed double-kick, so it’s not like anything Electric Wizard has ever done. As the album proceeds, tracks like “Cannibal Abattoir” and “Centurion” up the death metal level, and album centerpiece “Born in a Grave,” opens up with some blast beats, seeming to approach the stoner/death thing from the other end until it locks in a ‘90s-ish groove in its verses. Yee’s vocals are unipolar. He screams high every now and then, but it’s death metal all the way, which for a release like Ritual Executions, is probably how it should be. Crooning over riffs as dirty as Keleher’s wouldn’t work anyway.
That’s one thing about The Dead’s second album (preceded by a 2007 self-titled); it is fucking filthy. Around its halfway point, “Born in a Grave” cuts the pace for a while, and man, I just want to take a shower after hearing it. I don’t know what in Brisbane would make a band conjure up such dirt metal, but it’s near grotesque, which is undoubtedly what Yee, Keleher and Morse were going for. There are other bands out there who’ve blended death and stoner metals, but The Dead might be the best I’ve heard, since the two styles don’t sound disparate within the material, but rather, mesh well to create something new. New and gross. The title track sets up a droning middle with more opening blasts, then trades back, and “Blood Angel” gives Morse’s ankles a workout as Keleher’s Eyehategod riffs are soon to be complemented by an almost ceaseless kick-drum. “Blood Angel” might be my favorite track on Ritual Executions, but the 10-minute fade-in/fade-out closer “Death Metal Suicide,” though entirely instrumental, pulls together some of the best The Dead has to offer stylistically. It’s a toss up.
Sometimes I think I’m the only person in the world to have arrived at stoner rock from the heavier end of the metal spectrum. Amidst loads of ex-punkers, hardcore kids and straight up classic rock types, the headbanger contingent within the weedian genres is relatively small, but a band like The Dead feeds an impulse for brutality that’s downright primal, and to hear Ritual Executions transpose the two sounds onto each other – especially to hear it as well done as it is – is both refreshing and nostalgic at the same time. I have the feeling I’ll be back to The Dead on those days where nothing feels heavy enough but I still want a taste of that doomed groove.
Tags: Australia, Brisbane, Diabolical Conquest, The Dead
