Review by Sam on April 8, 2026.

I have been through drug and alcohol rehabilitation, both the therapeutic and legal sides of it, and if there is one thing I learned while enduring that process, it’s that having expectations is a dangerous business. That’s because when you have expectations in place, you’re just setting yourself up for disappointment. How does this relate to Danish death metallers Undergang? Well, check the previous review to find out. Evidently, the author was expecting to have his mind blown and his face melted by listening to their fourth album, and that didn’t happen, hence his disappointment and subsequent bashing of their effort. Misantropologi finds Undergang four records deep into a prolific career, and if things sound a bit formulaic at this point, I think they can be forgiven, because this is still ball-crushing OSDM.

My favorite thing about this type of death metal is, without question, the vocals. They’re just so filthy, putrid, and disgusting. The only other dude (outside of the legendary Craig Pillard, of course) that I can compare to Undergang’s frontman, David Torturdød would be Tibor Hanyi of Cryptworm. If you haven’t heard those guys, do yourself a favor. They have a new record coming out in just a couple of weeks, and they just keep getting better and better. Anyway, when a band’s first album is nearly perfect, I think it’s unfair of us as fans to still expect perfection four albums down the road. Is Vol. 4 better than Sabbath’s self-titled? More innovative, perhaps more experimental, but I’ll take the birthplace of it all over the fourth album any day of the week. That doesn’t mean that Vol. 4 doesn’t rule, because it does. The Sabs had become vastly different men over the period of 1969-1972, so to me it’s a bit of a travesty to even compare self-titled to Vol. 4. I think the same philosophy can and should be applied to our friends from Denmark.

If the opening riff of Misantropolgi’s seventh track Væskende sår doesn’t induce some major headbanging for you, then either stop being so pretentious or go listen to Atheist. What Undergang does is simple, straightforward, caveman death metal. The uber-downtuned guitars, aforementioned putrefaction of the vocals, and punishing double bass create a miasma of death metal delights. This shit is for lovers of Obituary’s first couple of albums, or those of Grave, or even the long forgotten cult heroes Winter of the early 90s NYDM scene. Hell, Undergang even has a song that made me think I was hearing a cover of Winter’s Servants of the Warsmen, which is to me a good thing. What I love most about these OSDM revival bands is the sense of honesty conveyed in their music. The dudes that make up this scene are perfectly aware that they are doing nothing new, but they play with such conviction and swagger that the novelty, though revived, remains quite effective.

I listen to old bands like Obituary and Deicide because I want to feel it. I want to feel that raw, visceral, highly unprofessional exuberance that those guys put to tape back in the day. And yes, I do love Atheist, so forgive me for the shots fired earlier in this review, but Atheist were technical, and that was their defining aspect. Undergang are not technical. Their focus is sheer brutality, unrestrained morbidity, and I will venture to say that they are consciously paying homage to their heroes. Another aspect of Undergang’s honesty that I love is that they refuse to do vocals in English, and you can damn well rest assured that they most likely have a better command of English than you or me. That tends to be the case with European speakers of English as a secondary language, while we Yanks generally can’t be bothered to even acknowledge that there are other languages in the world.

To sum up this rant, Undergang is an honest, efficient, OSDM band without pretense that you should listen to when your mood is that of murder and hate. That’s why the title of this work, Misantropologi, is so appropriate. These heshers make no bones about who they are, where they come from, and that which they were put on this earth to do.

Rating: 9 out of 10

Review by Nathan on August 28, 2023.

I like OSDM revival stuff as much as the next guy (perhaps even a little bit more) and Undergang combines that low-end filth with some trademark Danish bounce. This type of brutish, trudging, midpaced stuff has been established at this point, but to be fair, the band has been plugging away at it for over 10 years. They burst on the scene knowing exactly what they wanted to be - a filthy, groovy death metal band - and they haven’t stopped doing that. With Misantropologi being the fourth in a catalogue filled with tons of thick chugs, super-low toilet gurgles and the occasional despondent break. Misantropologi seems like a safe bet to be a steady banger in the “slow-ish death metal that isn’t death/doom” niche.

If nothing else, Undergang is a lot more refined on this album. Where an album like Indhentet Af Døden is a bit looser with its songwriting and riff choices, at this point, Undergang knows what an “Undergang riff” sounds like, they’ve played some live sets and seen what the crowd reacts to, and I imagine that influences your writing in trying to distill songs only to those elements. The problem is, you can’t mosh for an entire set, and in the songs on Misantropologi being distilled down to more basic elements, they lose the more dynamic energy and variety that the early stuff had. Not to say that they used to write sprawling, multi-genre mashups, far from it, I just think that time clarifying the band’s aesthetic has also, in turn, restricted their creativity with the project a bit.

Misantropologi brings nothing new to the table. That was never a bad thing before, but at this point it sounds like the band is bored with their own ideas. Recycling ideas isn’t a terrible thing in principle, but it definitely serves as a weakness if the delivery isn’t enticing enough. The production isn’t helping matters much; the band used to have a very natural, wet feel to their music, but Misantropologi is a lot buzzier and doesn’t capture the heaviness as well. The vocals sound fried, moany, and contribute a great deal to the sleepy vibe the album produces, which might actually be a product of them being pushed to the forefront of the mix. David Torturdod has one of the lowest lows in death metal, and Misantropologi makes him sound weak and burpy. Many of the riff changes, sudden blast breaks and doomy drops feel almost obligatory, like the band wanted to write something else but realized that Undergang doesn’t write songs like that and then just referred to an idea they had used before. It’s a very intangible and subjective thing, I know, but early Undergang sounded like they were actually having some fun with it, and this feels rushed and hastily assembled. Most of the songs are short, punchy, and don’t really tie into one another much, but even Doden laeger alle sar had more cohesion, and it addition, it sounds better and was recorded at the same studio! When you put it all better, Misantropologi sound noticeably more confused and uninspired than the band’s back catalog, and I’m not sure what exactly happened. Bad batch of drugs in the studio?

At their best, Undergang is a solid addition to any caevman riffmeister’s catalog, but I would definitely not start with Misantrolpologi. It doesn’t do much of interest in a saturated and samey genre, and the band themselves has very similar ideas played in a more convincing and engaging way on previous full-lengths. Best to pass on this unless you’re really sure you’ll listen to anything this band does, even if Misantropologi sounds like a bunch of tracks that were scrapped in the studio during past album recordings.

Rating: 4.3 out of 10