Album Reviews : Necrophagia – WhiteWorm Cathedral

Necrophagia are a new type of beast for me. It’s definitely death metal, but it’s never really fast, and while it’s definitely evil, I’m not sure if they’re having a fun time playing with, or if they’re just kind of old and lame.

The music itself is solid. It’s all pounding and groovy and comparatively slower than most death bands I’ve heard, which is overall my jams. The vocals are pretty damn decent, and I really do like the riffs and the accompanying head-bang-encouraging drumming, even if the guitar sound is a little closer towards the Hadal Maw fuzz end of the death metal spe than the Cannibal Corpse gushing-perfection  The occasional stabs of synth seem to be there to make sure everyone knows they’re evil, and it’s nice enough. I’d say it’s unnecessary but then I’d run the risk of spending the rest of the review discussing the merits of thinking of the universe as devoid of values and human egoism and why metal musicians would be picked last in a list of “Necessary Person In The Apocalypse.” And then I wouldn’t have any room to talk about the fucking lyrics and samples on this CD.

When you do something well, you should be encouraged to keep doing it. When you do something poorly, you should probably be told lest you keep doing it (which incidentally is both how and why I keep writing for websites and doing stand up gigs). Necrophagia are really good at snapping your neck with some jack-boot, goose-stepping, probably-vaguely-racist funky death metal. They should maybe reconsider their lyrics, which run the stupidity gamut between Zombie SS super soldiers, satan, warlock messiahs, dead things, the devil, and everything else you’d expect from a 70’s shlock horror film. Which, oddly enough, seems to be where they sourced their samples used to introduce songs, in the same way balancing a bucket of piss on a slightly open door is a way to introduce strangers to your sense of humour.

Maybe I’m missing the joke. Maybe they’re supposed to be funny, or ironic, or raising the ire of squares like me. I don’t really care why they’re there and whether it’s a joke or not; I still have to listen to three fucking idiots wail “Satan! Satan! Satan!” every time I want to listen to one of the tracks. And that’s not that fun.

If you can look past (or not care about) the inanity of some of it, you’ll find a slower paced death metal album that I really liked. Whether you like it as well is entirely for you to decide once you’ve bought it with legal tender through an approved channel.

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