Beats and yelling: Deceased

Children of the Morgue
Out 30^th August on Hells Headbangers

Ah Deceased, on paper such a straightforward prospect, in practice anything but. One of death metal’s formative recruits in the late 80s, but outside the orbit of the fledging scene’s major hubs, their name never garnered the same cachet as their peers to the South and North. That, and the fact that their debut album arrived too late to impress despite its obvious charm. ‘Luck of the Corpse’ was considered retro even at the time of its release in 1991, along with efforts from fellow early adopters of death metal in Master and Massacre, all equally hampered by delays in entering the full length game. Who knows what the pantheon of death metal’s origins would have looked like if these three had scraped albums together just three years earlier.

What the aptly titled ‘Luck of the Corpse’ lacked in flare it made up for in a lawless, tongue in cheek swagger, tempered by Fowley’s adeptness for indulging in gothic horror cliches with an apparent sincerity, leaving the listener unsure whether to receive it as charming or farcical. Two virtues the death metal audience of the early 90s had little patience for.

Strike two for Deceased was not managing a follow up for another four years in the form of ‘Blueprints for Madness’. Widely agreed to be Deceased’s most assuredly death metal outing, it is also their darkest, most sincere, jagged, and altogether cold. It never fails to please on revisits for its retention of the utterly feral energy of the debut and – true to its title – imbuing vestiges of thrash with an almost animalistic madness. But the appetite for such unabashedly direct death metal had all but waned up by 1995, the world had moved on.

So, too, did Deceased. The resulting ‘Fearless Undead Machines’ released in 1997, a beast of an album in length and concept, has pretty much set the template for all Deceased outings to date. A combination of epic heavy/speed metal, thrash crossover, punk, only the vaguest hangover of death metal remaining. What is perhaps most striking about this album, and by extension the majority of material that followed, was its ability to work in highly cliched subject matter – zombies and classic gothic horror narratives – and rival the likes of King Diamond for the sense of theatre, fully thought out concepts and storytelling, alongside powerful, well architectured heavy metal, traditional in all its constituent parts yet somehow fresh to the ear.

 ‘Children of the Morgue’ is just the latest in a long line of similarly dense, filling offerings from Deceased, a five course meal of melodies catchy enough to land on a pop punk album, boundless percussive energy, a cornucopia of heavy/speed/thrash metal riffs in their armoury, and Fowley’s near unstoppable enthusiasm for retelling high concept horror through the medium of metal.

Deceased are one of those socially mobile metal bands, bridging the gap between the grassroots, blue collar, rough and tumble of underground metal along with the punk engine room that still drives it, and the aristocratic, cinematic, theatrical upper class of virtuoso heavy metal who favour big stage shows, larger than life concepts, and treat their album releases with all the pomp and ceremony (and content) of a summer blockbuster.

Deceased have perhaps never been recognised as much as they should have been for this endeavour. Fowley’s vocals remain of a punk vintage, lacking anything like the melodic adeptness of the classic metal crooners. Guitar licks burst out of the speakers with crowd pleasing energy, but always fall back into the same old reliable batch of punky speed metal variations. The tracks – much like King Diamond – contort and extend themselves in meandering, often tentative links in order to create enough space for the lyrics to work through their epic story arcs, pontificating on horror, tragedy, intrigue, and betrayal. The stuff of classic gothic melodrama, here manipulating the very artistry of riffcraft to its end, good taste or pacing be damned. This is speed metal reimagined in Broadway Musical form.

One can often come away from these hour long sittings not really aware of the experience they have just had. Each moment is enjoyable, and certain tracks – those with fewer and more focused ideas – function and are remembered as coherent artistic units. But the totality of the album, the density of it, it requires focused and patient study. But so filling is the music, so lethargic are we by the end, that taking on the prospect once again is sometimes too much to contemplate.

But I remain thankful that Deceased exist. Thankful that they took this direction once they dispensed with their death metal selves. Thankful that they’re still active, able and willing to undertake such ambitious prospects. Giving us a chance to reappraise the detritus of earlier forms of speed and heavy metal and the boundless enjoyment we get from blending them with punk. Their ability to keep the comedic and dramatic spirit of classic horror alive without falling into pastiche, or making us feel like we’re indulging in a guilty pleasure, or pure novelty. For keeping high concept heavy metal alive, but doing so whilst retaining their decidedly blue collar credentials. And yes, Deceased albums are always red carpet events worthy of the most lavish in theatre and cinema. One must prepare the body before sitting down to take in what they have crafted for us. And it may be some time before I am ready to do so again. But when the times comes, I certainly won’t regret it.