While it’d be easy to roll your eyes at the idea of a zombie-themed concept record from a one-man doom outfit, this first full-length from Persistence In Mourning (a.k.a. one Andy Lippoldt) is actually more engaging than you might initially give it credit for. Telling the tale of our doomed protagonist’s flight from pallid, groping hands to his subsequent infection and the unthinkable consequences it’s perhaps strange to say that it’s the sub-Thergothon funeral doom elements that’re actually the album’s weakest point, with a thin, unthreatening guitar sound that does little to complement the dread to be found elsewhere. Instead, it’s the oddly unsettling Fulci soundtrack feel to proceedings that lends ‘The Undead Shall Rise’ its real charm: waterlogged keyboard motifs, echoing acoustic passages, burbling electronic chirrups and, of course, the grave-soil clogged groans of Lippoldt himself all helping to make this less a work of belched-up B-movie hokum than an intriguing and effective slice of gut-munching torment from which there is no hope of escape, no matter how well you think you’ve boarded up the windows.