UNDEAD: Existential Horror

Release year: 2019/2020
Label: Kadabra Music

With what appears to be a zombie on the cover of the album, Undead set the tone for the record from the go. The band, whose members reside in Spain and the UK, make no claims to originality on this, their debut album. Musically, Existential Horror is just as standard fare as the zombie is thematically in death metal.

Steeped deep in old school, Undead’s sound is a combination of various schools of death metal. You can certainly hear nods towards Sweden, but also old school US death metal, and elements lifted from the thrash-infused pioneers who created much of the blueprint for the genre. And more, if you care to dig. All well and good so far, right?

…well, not quite. Undead’s mix of approaches to death metal is rather generic and nondescript in it’s broad-ish scope. This is compounded by the rather run-of-the-mill compositions and dime-a-dozen overall sound. The long and short of it is that Undead is generic. Really generic. On almost every level.

It’s not that Undead do things badly. In fact, I wager Existential Horror would be more memorable if they did. Undead don’t do anything wrong, really, they just do just about everything in a manner that’s been done to death, and they don’t do it exceptionally well. The end result is generic, faceless… mediocre. Did I already say generic?

This is one of those album that goes in from one ear and out from the other, and doesn’t leave much of a lasting memory. In either direction.

2.5/5

Visit Undead on their official website, Bandcamp or Facebook