Band Line Up 2025
New York-based death metal greats Undeath emerge from festering slime with their new album, More Insane, for Prosthetic Records. Previous album It's Time... To Rise from the Grave caught a wave of acclaim on TheNeedleDrop's YouTube channel, earned Best New Music from Pitchfork, and, most impressively, rocketed to the top of Decibel Magazine's Top 40 Albums of 2022, along with a coveted cover feature. On More Insane, Undeath—featuring Kyle Beam (guitars), Alexander Jones (vocals), Tommy Wall (bass), Jared Welch (guitars), and Matt Browning (drums)—feast on the rotten flesh of brutality, complexity, and depravity. Singles "Brandish the Blade," "Disputatious Malignancy," and the title track are imbued with death metal's immortal soul but possess Undeath's inimitable energy, pit-friendly hooks, and work-hardened ethos.
"We put more pressure on ourselves than anyone else—it's all internal," says Jones. "We always try to one-up ourselves. There's exterior pressure for sure, but we ignore it. Ultimately, we're just big fans of our band. We know what we want to hear from ourselves, so we're always making music we'd be stoked to listen to as Undeath fans."
"The songwriting has been streamlined a lot since Lesions," Beam adds. "Even though I wrote [for this album] on the road, most of the songs were written at home in my chair—I just ripped them out. I'm trying to get closer to tracing the line of metal from the mid-'70s to now. More to the point, if you've never heard us before and see us live, you can take something away from it. We want people to remember the songs. That's important to us."
Undeath rose to infamy since forming in Rochester, New York, in 2018. From the gory, wild-eyed splatter of the band's embryonic period (Demo '19 and Sentient Autolysis) to the fervent fan and press acclaim of debut Lesions of a Different Kind (2020) and Billboard Chart-topping successor It's Time..., the Rochesterians' mastery of the extremely extreme is no mean feat. They've logged over 250 shows to date (sharing the stage with Exodus, The Black Dahlia Murder, Suffocation, et al.), played festivals in the U.S. (Decibel Metal & Beer Fest, Milwaukee Metalfest), Denmark (Copenhell), the Netherlands (Into the Grave), the U.K. (Download, Damnation), and Beam even has a Dunable Guitars signature model, the 'Skeletonizer.' Undeath not only knuckled down on effort, but most importantly, they've written great songs, like "Rise from the Grave," "Lesions of a Different Kind," and "Necrobionics." More Insane intensifies all aspects of Undeath's horrifying visage.
"The songwriting is the same as always—riffs, drums, vocals, brutality," exclaims Beam. "Writing began before It's Time… was released. 'Dead From Beyond' was the first track completed, while a few tracks took slightly longer to form up. 'Cramped Caskets (Necrology)' was the most recently completed track. 'Bones Clattering in the Cave' is a Tommy [Wall] track, and Jared [Welch] also brought his A-game to
'Disattachment of a Prophylactic in the Brain.' Like me, those guys are always writing. They have a great work ethic. We're proud of this record—it's absolutely Undeath!"
"'Bones' is such a strong closer," Jones says. "The track has an intense finality to it that I really enjoy. I'm happy where it ended up on the album. 'Brandish,' our first non-tech, fantasy-only tracks, and 'Disputatious' are two tracks I felt had to be on the record when I heard them. The rough demo of 'Brandish' was so sick. The title track, 'More Insane,' is straight death metal goodness—an undeniable death metal banger. When we played it for [producer] Mark Lewis in the studio, he said, 'You'll be playing this song for the rest of your lives.'"
If the gross-out teenage hallucinations of It's Time... rattled death metal's caved-in cranium, More Insane explodes with even sicker vistas. Lyrically, Undeath pick up, in part, where 'Necrobionics' and 'Enhancing the Dead' left off. Indeed, the undead armies (from space) cause more carnage in 'Sutured for War' and 'Dead from Beyond.' Elsewhere, the New Yorkers summon nightmares from video games (Bloodborne, etc.) on 'Cramped Caskets (Necrology),' turn to high fantasy on 'Brandish the Blade,' and man-eating laboratory demons on 'Disattachment of a Prophylactic in the Brain.' Unifying themes of murder, weirdos, psychotic people (who kill others), and more lunacy prevail on More Insane. Browning's eye-catching cover art of a splayed head atop an optic white background engulfs all in graphic, blood-soaked glory.
"The head on the More Insane artwork is a sort of god-head figure," says Beam. "The whole Undeath painting universe exists in this severed, cleaved, dying head. Its inception was born of the More Insane chorus, 'inside my head a catacomb.'"
"We were sitting at a bar in Manhattan after a show, and Kyle told me he was writing a song called 'More Insane,'" Jones adds. "I knew, without needing to hear a note of music, that it also needed to be the record's title. It's catchy, funny, simple, and memorable. Our last two album titles have been mouthfuls, and I was really into paring it back a little this time and having a title that just popped. Also, Kyle half-jokingly once said, 'I don't want to sleep because I'd rather just be crazy.' The title always reminds me of that. Why commit yourself to something as sick as death metal if you're not in More Insane mode 100% of the time?"
The recording of More Insane was hearsed over to American studio wizard Mark Lewis (Cannibal Corpse, The Black Dahlia Murder) at Mark Lewis Audio in Nashville, TN. Undeath and Lewis met after a gig in Alabama. They became fast friends. With the basics out of the way, the group set up a month-long residency at Lewis's studio to nail down More Insane. Undeath and Lewis co-produced, while Lewis handled engineering, mixing, and mastering. "Brandish the Blade," "Disputatious Malignancy," "Dead from Beyond," and the title track are pure, unyielding death brought to horrifying reality by a kick-ass production.
"Mark gets the old-school stuff," says Beam. "He's not like some guy who only knows music from 2000 and later. I just thought it would be cool to work with him. When we met previously, we clicked with him immediately. He was extremely cool, and we all have a similar juvenile sense of humor. Also, I wanted tighter and better arrangements than last time, but not necessarily crazier or heavier. We have another great group of songs, so we focused on the production. The biggest thing about More Insane is the production. Compared to It's Time…, this record isn't as claustrophobic. It highlights the songs."
"This time around, there was just a specific sound we were chasing that we knew Mark could execute perfectly," Jones says. "We wanted it to be bigger, brighter, and clearer—the kind of record that doesn't lose any of its clarity when you turn it way the f**k up. Mark is 100% the guy for that sound. From a strictly professional perspective, Mark really pushed us all to deliver the best possible performances. He helped me step out of my way vocally and open up to a broader range of screaming I'd never really tried to access. He was a joy to make the record with."
Expect Undeath to take More Insane to their diehard fans around the world. Expect more bloodshed, crazier merch, and a ton of fun. In life, there's only Undeath. Only this time, it's More Insane!
