Reviews, Interviews, and Podcasts celebrating the best Extreme Metal music

Necromaniac – Sciomancy, Malediction & Rites Abominable

Necromaniac is a London based band which is composed of members from Sweden, Greece, Poland and Spain!  They call their music ‘Morbid Metal’ and have released a couple of demos and one great EP,  Subterranean Death Rising (2018).  The band were formed in 2011, so this album has been a long time coming and further supports the healthy, and growing British extreme metal scene.

The album starts with Caput Draconis, (Head of the Dragon, paired with the closing track, Cauda Draconis, or Tail of the Dragon), a dissonant, swirling piece off music that reminds me of Blut Aus Nord.  The vocals are buried deep in the mix but help establish the eerie and forbidding atmosphere.

Things really kick off with the blistering Daemonomantia.  The pace is manic, definitely strewn with thrash riffs, black metal nastiness, and topped off with death metal-like vocals.  The blinding starting riff gives way to a short section where the guitars introduce a new riff-based theme backed by the ever monstrous drums.  A third section follows which has some excellent guitar playing, again contrasted to the pounding and very busy drums.  It’s a solo of sorts, but melodic enough to balance the fury of the track.  This track takes me to Eastern Europe and certainly there are strains of bands like Mgla here.

After a haunting introduction, Grave Mound Oath settles very much into a blackened death metal riff, complete with buried synths and growls.  It’s murky and driven by the riff and, again, busy drums.  A break speeds the track up, giving us blast beats and death/thrash like riffing.  However, this is where the problems begin.  The band’s genre entry is described on Encyclopaedia Mettalium as “Black/Death/Thrash Metal” (I would also add Doom to that list) and certainly each track has some of these elements.  The issue becomes that the band hasn’t got a style of its own.  The ‘pick and mix’ approach to extreme metal, which is very fashionable at the moment, means that most tracks just pass you by.  Grave Mound Oath is one of those tracks.  Being unable to settle into one style the track throws everything at us and gives us nothing.  It blasts along and eight minutes later you’re still trying to remember it.  

Calling Forth the Shade, in contrast, gives us a doomy-horror film atmosphere, with tortured screams, pounding drums and  feedback driven guitars.  It’s ponderous but has a memorable, dissonant guitar riff, and the different elements are harmonious and drenched with horror.  The song builds and we get more screams, accompanied by hideous laughter as the guitar takes off on a muddy solo.  It’s all very good.  By the end we have feedback merging into a Hammer Horror film type organ, and I for one loved this track.

Great Is The Thirst Of The Restless Dead, is, firstly, a great title for a track, and one that gives us a ferocious assault on the senses.  Fast, threatening, it has great guitar work and for once the vocals seem to be part of the melody rather than something separate.  The breaks, the ‘stop and go’ approach works well here, and the drums are fast and technically spot on.  The track is only just over three minutes long, but that’s enough, and it ends with a death growl from hell.

Teraphim (Skull Sorcery) could be the twin brother of Great Is The Thirst Of The Restless Dead, with the same furious pace and drive.  However, here the vocals seem alienated from the track and all the busyness in the world isn’t going to cover up the fact that this track hasn’t much to offer.  To be honest, it sounded all very formulaic to me and one of those tracks that just pass you by.

Conjuration Of St. Cyprian is a short, under two minute, ambient, discordant, synth and vocal led piece that prepares us for Swedenborgs Skull.  This track starts as a thunderous blackened/thrashy piece, but breaks into a doomy, heavy, titanic riff.  There’s control here, and slower sections relates much better to the fast, viscous sections.  The vocals are too buried for me, which is a pity, but the guitars drives this morbid-themed track to the extremes of thrash/doom metal.  All very good and some wonderful playing all round.  A great, doom-laden section about two thirds in gives us bells, striking chords, and a wonderful, tremolo-picked riff.  That moves into a very thrashy riff, reminiscent of 80s heavy metal, but the song out stays its welcome and by the time we get to the end, I for one was relieved.

Necromancess / Cauda Draconis closes the album.  It starts as a mid-paced, black metal vibed affair, with buried, death metal vocals accompanying the swirling drums and hypnotic guitars.  It’s obviously meant to be the ‘epic’ track, coming in over eleven minutes the band throw everything at us.  in many ways this track highlights the issue I have with this type of music, it is neither fish nor fowl, to quote the great man.  Theres a change every minute and all that does is disorientate the listener. There’s nothing to hold on to, as it were.  The band are clearly excellent musicians, but it seems as if they want to show us everything they can do in this one track, and the effect is one of, ‘so what?’

I don’t want to be negative about this album or this band.  They are good and this album is definitely worth a listen.  Will it stick with you?  I’m not so sure.  My favourite parts where the doomy, more ambient tracks, but I am sure that there’s something for everyone on this album, and that perhaps is the issue.

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