NECROVATION

Word on the street is that you've had it up to your neck in death metal wannabes and new-school bastardizers of all that is true and old school. Perhaps you've been looking in the wrong places for the nasty stuff. Have you tried Blood Harvest Records? They've got a little ole death metal CD called "Breed Deadness Blood" by a little ole trio of Swedish death metallers called NECROVATION that will bash your brains in, bash 'em right the fuck in. I hope you've not showered yet.

As filthy and knurled as NIHILIST and early ENTOMBED (as in "Left Hand Path"),as pummel grooving as early GRAVE, and as doomed up and string bent as INCANTATION, "Breed Deadness Blood" is your dope sick fix of pure death metal fury. The three members of NECROVATION produce one hell of a racket on "Breed Deadness Blood" that is godless and devoid of any semblance of purity and prettiness. The cavernous, mid-range growls of guitarist Seb are not of this world and fill the room with dreadfulness and unease; some seriously evil shit, let me tell you. The overall attack — one that includes Seb's horrific tones, demon screaming solos, and hellish arsenal of riffs, as well as the freight-train-to-Hades rhythm section of drummer Bünger and bassist Anton — is, of course, relentless, like a bull in a china shop. Yet once you've picked yourself up and dusted yourself off, it soon becomes apparent that this is an album filled with strong arrangements. That's right, the guys can in fact write songs, albeit venom-soaked and violent songs, but songs nonetheless. It's just that the blitzkrieg can be so overwhelming that some may miss the intricacies.

How the trio manages to keep the calamity in check without causing massive structural damage is beyond me, but it works. Take a song like "Dark Reverie", for example. You get stomping grooves, blasting mayhem, incredibly ugly riffs, a hair raising guitar solo, and I'll be damned if there isn't a little hook in that sucker. Pace breaks into fire breathing, straight beat grooves are one of the band's specialties as well (e.g. "Putrid Evocation" and "Death Salvation", the latter ghoulishly toe-tapping). It may seem hard to believe with all the napalm dropping going on here, but the music is relatively varied and quite memorable, the title track perhaps the best example.

Isn't it interesting how some of the better death metal albums are often found deepest underground? But the death hounds seem to have a nose for sniffing out the good stuff. Just in case you've got the sniffles though, let me point you in the direction of NECROVATION's "Breed Deadness Blood". You won't be disappointed.