Artist: Necrowretch
Country: France
Label: Season Of Mist Underground Activists
Formats: LP / Cassette Tape / CD
Year: 2024
Necrowretch has been amongst my favourite bands from the Old School Death Metal resurgence from around 2010. Yet, being completely different from their peers, this French band never really fitted to the same frame. Although sharing a bit of the same fresh and youthful energy, there was not much they had in common with bands like Undergang, Krypts, Stench Of Decay, Morbus Chron, Burial Invocation or Maim. Compared to those, Necrowretch always had a way more aggressive pace and a piercing Black Metal energy to its music. Their first 12” EP on Me Saco Un Ojo Records and the sadly defunct Detest Records, I still regard as not only the highlight of that Old School Death Metal revival, but also the pinnacle of the band’s entire career.
Now, let’s fast forward to 2024, it is safe to say that the band has been rather prolific, now delivering their fifth full-length album. But that idea, of the ‘Putrefactive Infestation’ 12” EP being their greatest effort, never changed. For sure, their debut album and its follow-up, ‘Putrid Death Sorcery’ (2013) and ‘With Serpents Scourge’ (2015) had their good moments, but along the way the band lost its vital part. And listening to album no. 5, I can’t do anything but draw the same conclusion.
The charm of pre-album Necrowretch was the frantic energy, the pureness of their relentless energy. That is what kept on grabbing you by the throat: the never-ending stream of riffs, pummelling drums and heavily reverbed vocals. It all whirled together in a fantastic poisonous vortex of intensity. Powerful and highly addictive.
I wouldn’t claim the band mellowed-out, but they for sure lost exactly that intensity of the early recordings. Maybe that is something that can be said about a lot of bands in general, also of that same generation, bands like Undergang, Krypts, Miasmal and Burial Invocation also never matched their great demos with any of their subsequent releases. But, Necrowretch also changed their musical formula. Not so much the individual musical ingredients, but the for sure the balancing between them. With each subsequent release the band started to lean more towards a Black Metal connotation, eventually leaving much of their Death Metal roots behind and going into more Necrophobic and Watain territories.
‘Swords Of Dajjal’ is again perfectly fitting into that frame. Again the band crept closer up to the same musical domain of Necrophobic. Even to such an extent that it is even getting harder to really distinguish both bands. Necrowretch’s way of lacing their Black/Death Metal blend with lots of melody, blistering speed and a furious vocal delivery sounds crisp and accessible, just like the later works of the Swedes. While it might sound indeed just like something that goes down easily and would suit like proper background music during some household chores, I am quite sure that was not the way the music was intended.
The uniqueness of the ‘Putrefactive Infestation’ 12” and the many demo recordings the band released around the 2010’s is forever gone and I am sad to conclude that we got nothing in return. That doesn’t mean that ‘Swords Of Dajjal’ is a bad album, at least not as bad as the awful artwork, and it certainly feels like it is their best since their debut – mostly because of a wider scope of dynamism. But it is not at all live up to any of the great words of praise the album gets from their label (referring to the album as being their “biggest, boldest, most sophisticated and blackest album yet”). To me it felt just like another disappointment from a band of which the early work is so incredibly dear to me.
