Necrophagia – Moribundis Grim

Artist: Necrophagia
Country: USA
Label: Time To Kill Records
Formats: LP / Cassette Tape / CD
Year: 2024

With the passing of Killjoy back in 2018 the metal scene lost not only a musician who was widely loved and appreciated for his kindness a nice personality, but also a highly influential and visionary man who had a major influence on the course of the development of extreme metal in general and more specifically on the Death Metal genre. His musical legacy, although it has some obvious highs and lows, is one that he can be eternally proud of while watching over us and many of his works still find their ways to my ear drums. Whether it is the classic ‘Season Of The Dead’ or the later works with Pantera’s Phil Anselmo (as Anton Crowley) on guitars, I basically love it all and with me there are still so many others who will always be coming back to these records.

It for sure Killjoy’s death was a sad low point of that year, but at least we had the records that would forever keep him alive in our collective hearts and record collections. Whether being close to him as a friend or just as a fan of his music, I am sure we all agree that he is greatly missed. But to me, personally, he left the world not only with a great couple of highly influential records, some of them meaning a lot to me too, but Necrophagia’s last album, 2014’s ‘WhiteWorm Cathedral’ felt like a great way to end. An very untimely end, but an end with a great record at least.

What I really did not need is a posthumous album made up out of various outtakes, covers, reworked old tracks and live recordings that is to be sold as “Necrophagia’s last album”.

But goddamnit. That is exactly what did happen with ‘Moribundis Grim’. This is exactly an album filled with just that. Leftovers, live tracks, early demos and reworked old songs. I am way too gullible to think there is an evil concept behind this, but whoever really thought this was a great idea must have fallen on their head just a few times too many as a child.

The few things that the remaining bandmembers had left from the sessions they were working on before Killjoy’s death were further “completed” with other musicians, including old members Mirai Kawashima (Sigh) and Titta Tani. So, this makes ‘Moribundis Grim’ the last record that has Killjoy’s vocals on it. But apparently not all vocals were recorded, so they asked John McEntee (Incantation) to fill in the gaps here.

The result is a loose and incoherent mishmash of everything and anything. It doesn’t only differ in sound quality but even in volume. On a musical level, there are some recognizable Necrophagia riffs to be discerned, but it is abundantly clear that these tracks were far from complete or never meant to be put together – let alone in this configuration.

Aren’t there any good things to mention about ‘Moribundis Grim’? Well, not many, that’s for sure, but it is hard to deny the greatness of Mirai’s impeccable work on the keyboards – it is always a pleasure listening to his sinister and horror-drenched keys. But other than this, I can only classify this as pure rubbish. I do not remember where, but somewhere I saw someone describing this as “pissing on Killjoy’s grave”, and that, frankly, is just what this is. What makes it even worse is that this is actually presented as a proper album: a fitting, respectful closing chapter of the Necrophagia legacy. And, really, it couldn’t possibly have been any worse. Putting all the last bits and pieces together and putting it out as posthumous compilation EP or so would have been forgivable, but this is putting the band’s and Killjoy’s legacy to shame – yes, this is indeed pissing on Killjoy’s grave.