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Necrophagia: The divine art of torture

25/03/08 || Kampfar

Most of you wouldn’t know, but Necrophagia was nonetheless one of the very first death metal-ish bands to spew its hate upon this perfect and harmonic world. They started up the incinerator in 1983 (84?) already but it took them no less than 5 demos and 4 years to hook up with a label willing to release their material, and I’m not surprised, not at all. I may only have heard snippets of their early discography, but for a reason, one only. It is downright horrible, every single millisecond I’ve heard.

It seems the world agreed, ‘cause after “Season of the dead” the band went into a hibernation not to be “broken” before 8 years after. You see, “Death is fun” is nothing but old stuff dressed up as a compilation and was very likely considered Necrophagia’s death rattle by the 4 retards still waiting for the seemingly dead and buried zombie to cough up fresh slime for them to suckle. Then, in 1997, when the fantastic four had finally given up, death by suicide, Phil Anselmo came along and convinced Killjoy to resuscitate Necrophagia.

And I’m glad he did.

There’s no Anselmo on “TDAOT”, he only participated on “Holocausto de la morte”, but needle-Phil isn’t exactly missed. Sure, “HDLM” is a good album, fine, foul and rotten, but it can’t hold the proverbial candle up against “The divine art of torture”, now that’s for sure. But because of this here masterpiece I would like to hand out a big thank you to Phil for shoveling the once piss poor band up from its grave and in the process help them (read: Killjoy) release something else than mere garbage, eventually leading to the exquisite platter in review.

I wouldn’t deny you a place in my funeral, Mr. Hansen.

Talent gone astray aside, it’s time for me to dissect this delightful zombie dish for you. First of all I’d like to hand out a Mammoth’s worth of kudos to the gang for actually capturing an eerie/creepy atmosphere; it fucking sounds like a psycho death metal circus, proper horror metal for sure. I’m not claiming it will make you piss your pants and scream like an 8 year old, unless, of course, you are a fan of H.I.M, but you sure should appreciate the twisted pictures projected into your head if you aren’t one of the said emo-homos.

It’s a team effort this, really is, but I’d nonetheless like to hail Mirai, courtesy of Sigh, for completing the picture, his FX and ideas a proper icing if there ever was one. And when the placenta glazed is a mother load of monstrous riffs, sick shrieks and infectious groove, we indeed have a winner, a shining beacon (of sickness) in the midst of a pretending lot. Hails to fucking Frediablo as well, master of the crushing monster riffs, a fitting example being the (main) one he wrenched out for “Upon frayed lips of silence”, scale-breaking awesome it is. It makes me put my beard in the air and nod like retard, not a common happening, hence the missing straight jacket. And there is more, but I’d rather have you hearing them than reading about them. I’ve already challenged your attention span severely, so to avoid permanent damage I’ll wrap shit up.

Here are riffs with elephant balls, pounding drums, a pulse, sick vocals, variety within context, a dense atmosphere, all wrapped up in a befitting production, dirty at it, conveying the horror with conviction.

Buy this.

9 out of 10.

Information
Released: 2003
Label: Season Of Mist
Website: Necrophagia MySpace
Band
Killjoy: vocals
Frediablo: guitar
Fug: guitar
Iscariah: bass
Mirai: keyboard
Titta Tani: drums

Tracklist
01. Blaspheme the body
02. Upon frayed lips of sanity
03. Parasite eve
04. Maim attraction
05. Rue morgue disciple
06. The sick room
07. Conjuring the unnamable
08. Flowers of flesh and blood
09. The divine art of torture
10. Zé do caixão

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