Shrines of Paralysis

Critical reception

Shrines of Paralysis has received very positive reviews from music critics. Sputnik Music described the album as a "masterpiece of musicianship, composition and imagery", writing that "In keeping with Ulcerate opuses of the past, Shrines of Paralysis hides all of its nuances from plain view, uncovering them only for the most devout. Return with regularity and the mosaic begins to piece itself together." Invisible Oranges also praised the album, writing that "A lot of technical death metal gets described as knotty, but Ulcerate are much better at untangling the strands", and that "This decentralized and evasive approach to brutality captures the essence of death metal at its onset – a sense of unease and terrifying otherness – without ever falling prey to the genre’s tropes." Metal Hammer's Dom Lawson described the album as "intensely internal music, wrung from the darkest depths of the New Zealanders’ collective consciousness and spewed out with flailing abandon like Cthulhu bursting through the earth’s surface. It speaks of unimaginable horrors, as barbarous and excruciating maelstroms of dissonance and rhythmic ebb and flow like the opening Abrogation and the unnervingly bleak There Are No Saviours unfold." He concluded that the album is "another evolutionary jump for these shadowy Kiwis, but not one that caters to the easily bewildered."

Track listing

All lyrics written by Paul Kelland; all music composed by Michael Hoggard and Jamie Saint Merat.

Personnel