Unholy Redeemer Journey Beyond Death Review
Unholy Redeemer
Journey Beyond Death
Extremely Rotten Productions / Dark Descent Records
2026
I know I've said it before, but being able to do projects or even full-on bands remotely has given us some GREAT music over the last decade and a half. Recording technology has improved and developed in such a way that people that live continents away from each other can record at home or in a studio, share the files with their bandmates to lay down their parts over them, and they can even be mixed and mastered without any of the participants ever being in a room together. In that same spirit, we have five songs of scathing, bubbling cauldron death metal from multinational band Unholy Redeemer.
The Journey Beyond Death EP is not unique as far as how it was created. However, it is unique when you consider the musicians (Jens Pedersen (Den) – vocals, Steven Hull (Aus) – guitars, Tommi Grönqvist (Fin) – bass, Jared Mawdsley (Aus) – drums) that make up the band all hail from Australia, Denmark, and Finland. This, their sophomore effort, is 100% old-school death metal with its feet firmly planted in Swedish and Finnish soil. The production is very nearly lo-fi (which is period correct), as the guitars are buzzsaw and tuned low, the bass is an earth rumble, and the drums and vocals are reverberated and cavernous. Every note and drawn-out low guttural is draped in enough sludge to populate a landfill, but nothing suffers to be heard in the mix.
Unholy Redeemer specializes in street-sweeping plod, the intensity of death/doom and practical bouts of speed in opener (also the title track) “Journey Beyond Death”. They are also fond of the heavily effected mournful lead guitar lines and ominous backing keys. “Carrion of the Gods” begins next with a lurching, suffocating groove with the aforementioned accoutrements, but keeping things slow to mid-paced here until a faster tremolo-picked section breaks in with galloping double-bass drums. I'm being completely honest when I say I can't really make out what vocalist Jens is belching/growling into the mic, but he does so convincingly with serious venom, and his LOW gutturals fit completely within their caveman-ish approach.
“Blazing Grave Cathedrals” is the one song where d-beat and crust-inspired speed seems to be the fastest track to get their point across as they weave in and out of more droning, reverb-drenched lead lines and Scandinavian earmarks (single-note layering over held-out chords and mammoth chugs). They go from that to the Twilight Zone-ish drone of a swirling, circus-like guitar riff on “The Blades of Inversion,” which serves as an interlude/intro piece into the final track, “Ever Drifting….They Wait.” This is the highlight for me as it seems to marry the death/doom elements into a final zenith passage of lava-dripping guitars, choppy vocal gurgles, and a bass-and-drums-only middle bridge. They also utilize start-and-stop harmonized riffing before a bendy lead fill shreds away underneath the funeral dirge pace. On this track, they employ those eerie backing keyboards again to give the entire thing a morose, sullen conclusion before fading out into the ether somewhere.
You aren't going to be tested here for time if you've a short attention span. At merely one second over 20 minutes, Unholy Redeemer turn your speakers to burning embers with equal parts unsettled and menacing song craft and brutally heavy cave-dwelling energy. Their approach is singular, simple, and massively ethereal. The entire EP is shrouded in depressive anger, loss, and intentionally pedantic. Journey Beyond Death is exactly what I imagine navigating the gates of purgatory to be like….
RIYL- Incantation, Immolation, Fleshcrawl. Goetia, Hooded Menace, Demigod, Resurrection, Necrodeath
~TB