Unearthed — Self Titled
The whole album has a great necro, crusty and ultra lo-fi feel to it as if these tracks have been dug-up after rotting for a few months in over growing and mist enshrouded grave yard. On Track two ‘Flamed Remains’ Meldrum builds a very unwell, juddering and uneasy motor tone ‘wall’ which chugs and broods along in a wonderful nasty, sludgy and chilling fashion for nearly fourteen minutes and it brings to mind a ramshackled chainsaw trying boar into someone slowly twitching torso. ‘Fountain of Blood’ kicks-off it's just over twenty minutes of pressing & nasty sinister ‘wall’ brood with a few moments of what sounds dank tunnel crawling and coffin worm ribbed ambience before grimly slamming in with an almost ultra nasty sounding and sludge bound guitar hit. Before it stabs into a thick and obsessive ‘wall’ that's built around throbbing bass like morgue fridge purr and squeaking coffin wheel or damned ghost train circular grinds. ‘Serpent’ starts out with creepy 70’s horror movie flange peddle echoes before dropping into a great mid pace feasting static 'wall' which sounds like what you’d imagine an distorted recording of a mass of gorging maggots might sound like as the feast on the ripe near pop belly of a three day old corpse. Through-out the album Meldrum nicely varies the pace of the tracks from sluggish and semi fast zombie stumble, up to more rapid gnawing and feasting mid pace-ness. Length wise the tracks fall between seven to just over twenty minutes a piece; so there’s something to please those who like both shorter and mid length HNW constructions.
So this self titled effort is a great and highly consistent opening shot from Uneathered, with each track being a perfect balance between horror fed atmospherics, grimy nastiness and all out wall noise brutality and face grinding intensity. Certainly one of the highlights of this year’s HNW releases and a must have item if you enjoy your ‘wall’s with a healthy helping of corpse dripping, eye gorging and dark psycho house horror edginess.