UMUR
"Uncured Sickness" is the debut full-length studio album by Polish death metal act Ascaris. The album was released through Tuba Records in 1994. Ascaris formed in 1991 and released two 1992 demos before being signed for the release of "Uncured Sickness".
After a short atmospheric intro it´s immedately revealed on "Crawling Chaos", that Ascaris play a slow-to mid-paced and occasionally doomy old school death metal style (they speed things up on occasion though). It´s gloomy, morbid, and raw, but also quite atmospheric featuring some nice lead guitar work. The deep growling vocals (which sound a little like a young Jan-Chris de Koeijer) are placed high in the mix, and they are quite brutal. The instrumental part of the music is not played with the greatest conviction and especially the drummer have a hard time keeping time and not make mistakes (he often sounds strained and challenged beyond his abilities). The sound production is also quite raw and unpolished, which isn´t usually an issue on an old school death metal release, but here it means that it lacks power, and that isn´t a positive feature.
So "Uncured Sickness" is a release featuring some pretty decent songwriting, great vocal work, a relatively weak sound production, and sloppy instumental musicianship. Still there are enough redeeming qualities here to warrant a 3 star (60%) rating.