Until Death Takes Us All

Skull Crushing!! I'm sorry but those are the only words fitting of this band. Under The Grave are Montreal-based teenage newcomers, but trust me, with time they'll breathe harder down their older comrades's necks! Despite the fact that most band members are all 18 or close to it, its astonishing how mature they sound. Taking cues from swedish black/death metal bands for their their sound, adding just a tad of trash to the mix. It's all the more surprising that they've mastered that style right from the beginning. Indeed Until Death Takes Us All is a shotgun blast to the head, being so varied, melodic, brutal, versatile, that you cant help but bang your frigging head against the walls. Trust me, it is THAT good.

Maxime Daigneault is the bellowing voice you hear on this record, and boy does this man sounds pissed off as hell. There's some variety to his vocals, switching from to a death to a black metal voice effortlessly. Dany Desnoyers and Olivier Dagenais deserve as much praise, belting out killer demonic and diversified riffs, covering all their trash/death/black influences, and it shows. A riff can start as brutally as a warhammer swung at your face, then mellow down just a bit to let some melody in, before goin at breakneck speed. They're very competent axe-men. Olivier Pinard is pretty good too, blending in nicely and filling all the gaps with some solid bass lines, groovy at times, other times as burning as sulfuric acid. Last but not least, Anthony Savoia. Wow. Need i say more? Obviously i do. They're not too complicated, although this man sure is a good technical basher, who can switch from normal beats to some pretty intricate drum fills.

As mentioned above, taking their cues from the swedish metal scene, the same production was applied to this album. Which makes me think these fellow skull-crushers know perfectly well what they do and where they're going. The sound is a lil gruff, but clean enough to let you enjoy every musician's part. This was the road to take, which such monster songs as those. Polishing the sound even more may have taken a little bit of aggressivity off of their music and THAT would've been a real shame. I haven't had the chance to hear their self-released demo, but if this album is any indication, they're destined to go real far, if they keep it together and with some good promotion too. I hope they do both, so we may hear more from these men. 'Cause believe me or not, but Under The Grave is taking down names and will send all non believers to their fiery death!!!