ALTERED DEAD are a Canadian Death Metal band and “Returned To Life” is their second full length album and their first on Memento Mori. ALTERED DEAD on the surface are a simple straight forward Death Metal band who want to get on the stage, play their set and leave. Well, that’s where things start getting interesting. I can see the approach is akin to the regular Death Metal band, but ALTERED DEAD have managed to infuse strangeness into their tone, their style of writing riffs that it just turns out to be an interesting experience. The guitars are your regular downtuned affair, the riffs although relying on traditional structures manage to veer off tangentially at regular intervals. These are the parts where ALTERED DEAD truly manages to shine. Take your typical AUTOPSY tone and add to it a Nordic edge and finally top it with South American aggression and what we then have is what “Returned To Life” is all about. The album is just about 35 minutes long and manages to keep us immersed in the ragged, vitriol filled aggression. There are no gimmicks anywhere, the drumming is straight forward, the atmosphere is terrific and the riffs are filthy. I don’t think there’s anything more we can ask off the band. It’s neither a new direction nor does it have an independent monolithic identity. However, the approach to songwriting stands out on its own and adding to it the production and the quality of Death Metal on this record far outweigh the dime a dozen releases in this genre. Recommended. For more info, please visit: www.facebook.com/altereddead, www.facebook.com/memento.mori.label