Rating: 9.5

Country: USA

Release Date: 2005

Record Label: Thrash Corner

Track list:
1. The Kept
2. The Funeral Parlours Secret
3. A Witness To Suspiria
4. Unwanted Memories
5. Missing A Pulse
6. Craving Illness
7. A Visit From Dread
8. Fright

Total playing time: 48:31

Band Website: Deceased

Deceased - As The Weird Travel On

Mike Smith- Guitar
David Castillo- Drums
Mark Adams- Guitar
Les Synder- Bass
King Fowley- Vocals

King Fowley fanboys, stand up! Having served time in the equally sublime Doomstone and October 31, it appears that this living legend has absolutely no intention of throwing in the towel any time soon, his main gig Deceased sculpting a glorious legacy that has spawned both the writhing, sulphurous evil of 'Luck Of The Corpse' and the intricate, immaculately-crafted epic elegance of 'Fearless Undead Machines'. Are there even any remaining doubts regarding Deceased's legitimacy as one of the consistently brilliant heavy metal bands of our time? If any of you misinformed Neanderthals strive to dispute this truth, my suspicions are that 'As The Weird Travel On' will disembowel you, flay your skin and feast on your festering corpse. This is quite possibly the most thoroughly engaging, impeccably executed Deceased record to date, and all imbecilic naysayers who claimed prior releases were tedious and long-winded will likely change their tune here, as Deceased have continued foraging down the 'Supernatural Addiction' path, truncating the ambitious lengths of 'Fearless Undead Machines' without forsaking the involving, cinematic feel of their compositions. Somehow, the tracks here feel even MORE engaging than 'Supernatural Addiction' and 'Behind The Mourner's Veil', too. WUARGHHHHH!

It seems as time passes Deceased become progressively more comfortable with melody, shedding the unabashedly gruesome death metal skin that dominated their early recordings, gradually shifting into something far more distinctive and referential of galloping Brit speed/heavy metal than the brutal blatancy of their early days. Sure, you still have moments of ultra-aggressive, thrashy cacophony (“A Witness To Suspiria” raging forth with an apocalyptic maelstrom of Razor-esque guitars and frenzied double bass before a wild, discordant solo breaks through the melodic trappings of the record to wreck absolute havoc 03:30 through), but for the most part this is exquisitely catchy, criminally infectious material performed with an élan that eludes every single Gothenburg outfit that has spent its career chasing the shadows of Iron Maiden and Saxon.

In some senses, Deceased and say, At The Gates are the same, yet completely different. Both synthesize thrashy, urgent rhythms and savage death metal overtones with the melodic sensitivity of the NwoBHM's most renowned forerunners, but Deceased sound more sincere, more mesmerizing, more BALLS-OUT by far. It also helps when you have a (un)healthy fixation with the supernatural and the macabre, presenting songs as engrossing journeys into the unknown as opposed to lame rhetoric grounded in everyday life. This is HEAVY METAL, motherfucker, I need zombies, demons, ghosts and frankensteins, not a blueprint on how I should live my life! From first note to last, this is quite likely the most consummately executed Deceased project to date- the surging, throbbing double bass and twin-lead that breaks up a swelling mid-paced passage 02:40 through 8 minute closer “Fright” is simple, yet ridiculously effective. Unlike the Gothenburg replicas that music magazine cream their pants over nowadays, Deceased actually manage to sound melodic while sounding HEAVY and SPIRITED, there is SOUL in this music, and unlike, say, Mercenary or Mors Principium Est or some similarly horrible outfit, Deceased revisit heavy metal in its most glorious aeon, not when it was tarnished in the amateurishly clumsy hands of Gothenburg metal. This is genuine, this is gritty, this is metal as fuck!

Words cannot express how strongly I feel about this release and how significant Deceased are in an age dominated by facile, plastic music and manufactured emotion. Whether you enjoy the music is rather secondary, Deceased are worthy of your worship simply because they are so attuned to what heavy metal was, is, and should always be, defiant, aggressive, transcendental and BELIEVABLE. While as a fan I would have liked if the record was more conceptually oriented (come on, guys, another story like 'Fearless Undead Machines'? More explorations into delirium ie 'Blueprints Of Madness'? Please?) and if King Fowley did the percussive work (David Castillo is GREAT, don't get me wrong, but doesn't have the idiosyncratic charisma of Fowley, the soul and groove), these are all minor gripes for what is otherwise a magical slab of melodic death/thrash that will have you air-guitaring and headbanging until the next Deceased record. Let's cross our fingers and hope that it won't be another 5 year wait this time…

June 18th, 2005