January is arguably the slowest month of the year, both in new music and in life: if you’re finding yourself surrounded by broken new year’s resolutions and dreadful weather, it might be time to jumpstart your energy with some good ol’ death metal. It’s been more than a decade since Alabama’s Ectovoid released their last album ‘Dark Abstraction’— hardly a surprise, given the extreme number of other projects each member is involved with— but 2026 finally sees their return. If the past eleven years have aged this group at all, it isn’t showing on new record ‘In Unreality’s Coffin,’ which hits every mark in the death metal handbook.

Let’s get something straight, right here at the start: this is not an album for those looking for anything particular progressive or boundary-pushing (not that that’s a scathing criticism in-and-of-itself). ‘In Unreality’s Coffin’ acts as a devoted love letter to a variety of classic death metal acts, carving itself out a unique identity only through its distinct fusion of those influences. Genre pioneers Death are undoubtedly one such band being pulled from, especially 1988’s ‘Leprosy’— the gurgling mix Ectovoid have dialled in here, complete with enough room around the grumbling vocals to let them echo into infinity, could’ve been ripped straight from that record. Further classics including Suffocation’s ‘Effigy of the Forgotten’ and Bloodbath’s ‘The Fathomless Mastery’ feel like guiding forces throughout ‘In Unreality’s Coffin,’ pushing the record to be as grimy and all-around twisted as humanly possible. Ectovoid’s ambitions in resurrecting an older, purer form of death metal can certainly be felt in its booming drum production and razor sharp guitar tones: like a zombie breaking out of its grave, the genre is brought kicking and screaming into the forefront.

The circling guitar leads and explosive chokes of opener ‘Dissonance Corporeum’ do an excellent job signalling to the listener exactly what kind of record this will be: dark, heavy, and all-consuming, not unlike the cosmic horror displayed on the album’s cover. Ectovoid lean on tremolo-picked melodies heavily across these nine tracks, building both memorable lead lines (such as those on ‘Collapsing Spiritual Nebula’) and a great many of their riffs from this tried-and-true death metal staple— the fragments of harmony that can be gleaned from throughout the album do a great job poking through behind the gloomy growls overtop, turning the ending of ‘Intrusive Illusions (Echoes from a Distant Plane)’ into a certifiably catchy moment. When those guitar strings aren’t being put through their paces, ‘In Unreality’s Coffin’ actually harbours its fair share of influence from death doom: beginning on ‘Formless Seeking Form,’ the lumbering heft of a band like Incantation can be felt coursing through this record’s veins, only serving to increase the absolute weight being conjured here. Perhaps the greatest compliment Ectovoid deserve is that, right until the final moments of gargantuan closer ‘In Anguished Levitation,’ the group demand head-banging from you without excuse.

If there’s a core pillar of death metal that isn’t quite holding its weight on this one, it’s actually the out-and-out aggression that is so often associated with the style. Ectovoid execute on the nine songs with an extreme degree of confidence, and rightfully so— you’d be feeling good about your material too if it were as rock solid as ‘Irradiated Self.’ In sounding so incredibly tight and well-constructed though, ‘In Unreality’s Coffin’ is robbed of the absolute barbarity, the sheer chaos that elevates so many records to iconic status. Though all are worthy of some respect, there’s a relative lack of urgency in the roaring growls and shredding solos that make up so much of the album: it can be easy to question whether or not Ectovoid are actually pushing themselves here, especially given how safe some their writing can feel at times. Instrumental number ‘It Is Without Shape…’ lays out the album’s shortcomings plainly, as the cut feels both derivative of previous tracks and somewhat sterile in its presentation. Honestly, the band just could’ve done with being a little more pissed off.

How much you’ll enjoy ‘In Unreality’s Coffin’ really depends on what you expect from your death metal. The record makes few attempts to really push the envelope, but rather focuses on executing its winning ideas with absolute precision— it feels safe to say that anyone who’s enjoyed the work of such bands as Cannibal Corpse, Morbid Angel, Immolation and countless others will find a lot to love in Ectovoid, as the band really have done a great job celebrating their influences. There are few twists and turns here, perhaps to the chagrin of some, but in a modern landscape dominated by metalcore, there hardly needed to be: had ‘In Unreality’s Coffin’ released thirty years ago, it would probably be considered a classic today.