Alkymist - UnnDerr

Angry Metal Guy 70

What kind of an album title is UnnDerr? A weird one to be sure and maybe not the best for marketing purposes. The oddballs in Danish doom/sludge/prog project Alkymist may not care about such trivial capitalistic concerns as they attempt to refine and retool their heady blend of genres. Back in the Age of the Great Plague, we reviewed their sophomore outing Sanctuary and the dearly sabbaticaled Akerblogger had many good things to say about their balance of extremity and progressive wanderings. 2024 finds them back with a more streamlined approach accentuating the brutality while stepping back from the more esoteric angles. Unnderr is a raw, ugly beast mixing sludge intensity with doomy plods and harsh vocals to disorient and destroy the senses. If you can imagine Celtic Frost, Crowbar and Tiamat collaborating, this might be what you’d get. If that doesn’t get your unnderroos in a bunch, you live unnderr a very big rock.

Coming in with no prior experience with Alkymist beyond reading Akerblogger‘s review, I was immediately captivated by on opening track “The Scent.” The massive guitar tone is fucking great and the vocals heaving from a deathly bellow to blackened rasps and eerie spoken word feel evil as fook. The song is legitimately crushing but there’s just enough progressive flair to keep things interesting. It’s a great song and you know it on the first spin. That guitar tone could strip paint and it packs a vintage Celtic Frost punch I’m crazy about. “Digging the Grave” keeps the success rolling with a healthy dose of Tiamat and Another Messiah influences creeping into the riff-forward smash and smoosh. Alkymist batter you with simplistic but captivating riffs that weigh a cosmic ass-ton, but they’re careful to weave in atmosphere and mystery to round out the experience. Even the 10 minutes of the title track keep you locked in and along the way, you’ll encounter truly ginormous, gobsmacking riffs and Fields of the Nephilim-esque Gothic atmosphere even as death roars and evil cackles slime you with ectogoo. Could it be a few minutes shorter? Of course, but it doesn’t drag or bog down and it’s a winning combination of disparate styles.

“Light of the Lost Star” goes further down the Goth rabbit hole, with bits of The Cure-style guitar noodling mixed into an otherwise unstoppable world plow of a sludge doom beatdown. There’s even a trace of Black Royal in the riffwork to help you hail yourself. Large-scale closer “Master of Disguise” brings back the Fields of the Nephilim atmospherics as a screen to hide the inevitable riff slaughter by the Celtic Frosted Flakes-encrusted death hammer. regrettably, there are some lesser moments mixed into the winning. “Fire in My Eyes” feels a bit underwhelming with the newly stripped-back approach going too far, making the song feel one-note and flat. Likewise, “My Sick Part” suffers similar maladies but less severely due to its short length. As far as the production goes, it’s really all about that fucking guitar tone. Serve that sound to me on nachos, tacos, pizza, and even my beloved breakfast bowl of Ape Nuts. I can’t get enough of that crunching, distorted war force.

Did I mention that killer guitar tone and the cavalcade of monster riffs? These come courtesy of Stefan Krey. Despite a painful recovery from a broken hand, he churns out a horde of memorable leads that will peel the enamel off your teeth and make your neighbor’s cat develop a hunger for human spleen. He’s the star of the show and his maniacal riff-bends are more inevitable than Thanos with 2 Mittens of Destiny. His forays into sullen Goth rock territory only make the punishing riffs more awe-inspiring when they hit. Beauty and the beast in six-string form, people! Major props also go to Peter Jørgensen for a wide-ranging and highly effective vocal tour-de-force. Whether he’s muttering like a deranged serial killer or roaring like a demon from the 38th Circle of Hell, the man possesses the Kavorka! His offbeat delivery adds intrigue and danger to the material while imbuing it with a unique character.

Alkymist evolved their sound from Sanctuary, and some of the material here would have benefitted from their former proggy tilt, but what remains is brutally addictive and unrelentingly oppressive in the best of ways. I’m highly impressed by this little band of Great Danes. You should blast this at unreasonable volumes and then dive unnderr their back catalog. You will not be unnderrwhelmed. No, I won’t stop it!



Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Indisciplinarian Records
Website: facebook.com/alkymist
Releases Worldwide: November 15th, 2024

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