by Dan Goldin (@post_trash_)
There’s a bull-headed brutality to Necrot’s music that feels unfused. In a genre that often leans over the top, the Oakland trio seem grounded, crushing skulls while playing it (relatively) cool. There’s a consistency the band have built over the course of the last decade, the sound of unstoppable juggernaut force barreling forward at the leisure pace of a stampede. Like a wrecking ball forever swinging until all that remains is rubble, Necrot are capable of sheer destruction, but there’s a thoughtfulness to their songwriting, an intention beyond disgust and putridity. Lifeless Birth, the band’s third full length album, is rooted in reality, an old school death metal record with a focus on modern times. Void of the cosmic, supernatural, and demonic, Necrot are exploring the terrors of this world, the horrors brought on by humanity.
Having crawled through hell to arrive at this album - the process marred by sick family, bouts with disease and shattered bones - the trio arrive with a fiery determination. Lifeless Birth is both their most bloodthirsty album and their most accessible. Occupying a space in today’s prosperous death metal landscape somewhere between the primal caveman approach and splattered technicality, Necrot dig into the crust, creating dense and unforgiving music that isn’t big on frills but isn’t afraid to explore either. With their aggression firmly in tact, there’s a deviant sense of melody lurking in the unholy tangle of riff after riff but its presence feels more like an undertow than tidal wave. Necrot haven’t gone “melodeath,” they simply understand engaged songwriting. Songs like “Drill The Skull” and “Cut The Cord” are arena sized death metal with hooks galore, played with the earnest sincerity of an underground band.
Running rampant from the opening onslaught, Necrot have mastered the ability to both appease the tried and true death metal purists while implementing hints of thrash, hardcore, and even progressive metal. The key is that the primitive pummel of Lifeless Birth is tastefully constructed (at least as tasteful as an album called Lifeless Birth can be). Brash and bellowing as it may be, there’s a clear focus and sense of momentum to the carnage, just the right amount of heat to avoid combustion. It’s a balance, their dexterity is used to bludgeon and ensnare, eschewing any desire to flaunt technical ability (which they have in spades). Lifeless Birth is stunning throughout, but every titanic shift feels like a necessary cog in the wheel. Necrot have a special capability of moving time unencumbered, roaring naturally between mid-tempo menace and blistering thrash.
The first half of the album feels as though it could be textbook, an annotated expansion on how to perfect death metal. Built on vicious tremolo riffing that feels generally seismic and deeply entrenched grooves, the band thrash out one devastating anthem into the next. While the aforementioned “Drill The Skull” feels designed to create neck injury with an impenetrable hypnotic density, songs like “Superior” swarm with an avalanche of blast beat fills and buzz saw guitars serrated enough to cut through bone. Luca Indrio’s lyrics aren’t exactly sunny (“this new hole in your head / the future is shit”), but there’s purpose to his words, a poetic scourge on the plight of society’s deterioration with a hope for something else. The bleak sentiments are matched by producer Greg Wilkinson’s (Autopsy) aesthetic choices, everything swirls in the same sordid ooze, all levels seemingly matched in the grit and grime. Sonny Reinhardt’s triumphant guitar solos erupt from the faultline without dismantling the crust. These songs are ugly, but more than anything, they’re astoundingly catchy.
If the record’s opening salvo swings for the fences in terms of death metal as a vehicle for unsuspecting hooks and brute force, Lifeless Birth seems to evolve on the back end, as Necrot tear into their experimental side. The band embrace their technical wizardry with crusty disdain, pulling us deeper down into the depths. It still feels very much of the same album (there’s an incredible fluidity to the record as a whole), but the gloves are off and Necrot have come unleashed. “Dead Memories” and “The Curse” are the knock out punches, a pair of blows that won’t soon be forgotten, as the trio showcase that signature tastefulness while letting their artier tendencies wreak havoc. There’s progressive metal buried in the shadows of “Dead Memories,” a song that can only balance its devastating weight with its bending velocity. Darting between a dirge and a sprint without warning, the relentless pummel is matched by an unhinged solo and a grip of contrasting ideas that compliment each other perfectly. Rattled to the point of exhaustion, in comes “The Curse,” the record’s closing argument, a tour-de-force that never stops in its deviant expansion. The trio move from one immaculate bulldozing to the next, the riffs in constant motion as evil lurks and hope is inevitably swallowed whole by death and despair.