Beats and yelling: Ultimatum and the pulsating Petri dish of mid-90s death metal

Ultimatum: Among Potential States
Re-issue out 7^th January on Loud Rage Music (originally released in 1996)

The mid-1990s were a strange time for death metal. Depending on where you look, the genre was either undergoing a flowering renaissance, the codification of a rigid orthodoxy, or a deeply embarrassing capitulation to various styles emerging at the time, obliquely referred to as alt metal….depending on where you look [sic]. Geography matters here. The cradles of Sweden, Tampa, and New York were beginning to dry up (notable exceptions aside). The process of mainstreaming was also running out of road as bigger labels and media outlets lost interest and began diverting their capital to nu metal.

But after echoes of the death metal’s initial explosion continued well into the early 2000s. In Europe and South America in particular, a wonderful cultural exchange continued, thanks in no small part to Eastern Europe’s protracted opening up after the Cold War. What followed was a largely overlooked plethora of reinterpretations. Intriguing addendums and footnotes were added to the styles popularised in the early 90s. This small pocket of time is perhaps the closest death metal came to achieving a state of creative stability.

This was made possible by the alignment of two important trends. First, a number of smaller artists continuing to work at the genre’s coalface, all with their own unique interpretation of the form. Second, commercial interests left the genre to adapt in relative peace, delaying the heat-death that inevitably follows the presence of excess capital. We should of course note that this was before the combined efforts of Carcass, In Flames, At the Gates, Arch Enemy, and Behemoth made their homogenising effects known well into the next century and the resulting OSDM backlash.

But enough of retreading history. Onto the album before us. Ultimatum were one such artist to emerge from the pulsating Petri dish of the mid-90s. This Romanian outfit achieved one full length in their brief original incarnation. As if to carry the baton of Gorguts circa ‘Erosion of Sanity’, 1996’s ‘Among Potential States’ borrows from this form of evolutionary death metal (one hesitates to call it progressive, more on that later), bending the orientation away from sheer darkness and aggression into surrealism and disorientation dripping with mid-90s futurism via liberal use of synths. The latter of which will often replace guitar harmonies, providing a novel legato contrast to the jagged, staccato rhythm guitars.

Ultimatum take the percussiveness of early Gorguts and reorganise it into a form of linear thrash, stripping Watchtower back to chromatic and atonal forms. Despite the many references to technical death metal (such as it was at the time), the focus seems to be on providing a solid foundation for the articulation of melody first and foremost, with drums, despite their interruptive nature, pivoting toward back-beats instead of framing the riffs with lyrical patterns and entropic fills.

Basic power chord constructions are used as a jumping off point for explorations of creative dissonance, intricate bass melodies (a feature now treated as a hallmark of progressive forms where previously it was simply part of the furniture for cerebral death metal), and wonderfully convoluted detours exploring the intersection of guitars as a source of both melody and percussion. Vocals side with the distinctive rhythmic elements of the music, offering a mid-range bark of hardcore aggression, solidifying the album’s credentials as a critique of life within urbanist sprawls instead of the ambiguities of dark fantasy.

Despite the temptation to compare this to explicitly progressive death metal – Pestilence, Death, maybe even Atheist – a more illuminating analysis comes from situating this within the lineage of forward thinking thrash, from DBC, Voivod, Watchtower, through to Obliveon. Despite emerging from the context of death metal as it was in 1996, particularly of a post Gorguts variety, ‘Among Potential States’ is a wonderful handbrake turn for the genre. It leverages the knowledge and techniques developed from death metal to conduct a violent and urgent reappraisal of evolutionary thrash. As a result it is exemplary of the vital yet largely forgotten period of daring suggestions that took place within death metal from about 1994 to the early 2000s, before the genre was once again arrested by surplus capital.