### Horned Almighty: Necro spirituals

#### 14/01/14 || Habakuk

There we go again, another Spotify “dashboard” recommendation of an album that would otherwise have stayed completely under my radar. Why would I start digging through stuff from what, 2010, anyway? After all, I was in full metal consciousness at the time already, or so I thought. Bluntly put, I simply had no idea these guys existed. Sue me, I don’t read Metal Hammer or some shit. And no-one on GD has given a fuck about them so far, it seems.

Too bad. Is it because the dude on the right looks like a fighter face from Street Fighter II after a lost fight? Or because the bass player is called HAXEN? You know what a “Haxen” is? That is a Hax’n. And where is the fourth dude on that pic, anyway? Fixed that for ya.

Hailing from Denmark and officially sworn to Black Metal, the band have enough of an Entombed-style death metal vibe to keep me engaged. A notion derived from both the sawing guitar production and oompa-doompa meets d-beat drumming, interspersed with some double-bass – You know, just the way we like it. Song structures are quite catchy but feature enough of that “hold a grapefruit in the air with one hand” dissonance that it retains a decent black metal feel. Add a gargling growler spitting pestilence and general hatred, and voilà, we have ourselves a working formula! At times it’s slowed down a little, providing some variation to the otherwise consistent (some might say one-dimensional) proceedings. Fine with me, but my preference clearly rests with the faster parts. And that’s all there is to it, really: good, straightforward blackened death / deathened black metal that emphasizes headbanging over atmosphere, which suits my needs perfectly.

At some of the more basic moments I get a little Darkthrone feel, but for this to stay, “Necro Spirituals” is definitely overproduced.

…Fucking hell, right at THIS point I stopped typing. And when I came back to the browser tab, I noticed I had just watched a Youtube video of Fenriz discussing drum sounds. What the fuck? I certainly wouldn’t type “Darkthrone production” or some shit in the search. Never. That thing just appeared on my front page and 7 minutes later I come back to this. I have to stop writing and think about my life and how everything is connected. Seriously, mind is blown. What the fuck just happened? You guys, just go listen to Necro Spirituals in the meantime.

- Information
- Released: 2010
- Label: Candlelight Records
- Website: www.hornedalmighty.com
- Band
- Hellpig: guitars
- S.: vocals
- Harm: drums
- Haxen: bass

- Tracklist
- 1. Necro spirituals
- 2. Fountain of a thousand plagues
- 3. Sworn divine vengeance
- 4. Age of scorn
- 5. In jubilation and disgust
- 6. Blessing the world in pestilence
- 7. The illuminated void
- 8. Blasphemous burden
- 9. Absolved in the sight of God