One can find much to like on this later grindcore release, but it never quite gained traction in the canon. One wonders why, since it has Bolt Thrower and Carcass styled thunderous fairly technical grindcore, guttural vocals that sear ears and hope simultaneously, and carefully paced songs which accelerate for choruses.

At its heart, however, this album remains in the category of those without whatever spark of creativity or randomness allows great bands to emerge; its songs appear to be either very obvious basic riffs, or reactions to the obvious nature of these riffs, adorning them with decoration or deliberately ironic and random elements.

The oddball “jazz” solos which show us the wrong type of atonality — tone rows with no relation to the composition, more like an exercise in choosing scales which sound odd and playing them repeatedly in self-referential patterns — seem like another layer tacked on, sort of like the unbelievably good guitar production and studied grim-voiced vocals.

Moments emerge in which these songs reach greatness, but they are isolated moments, and the songs themselves hold together fine on a musical theory level but not on an artistic level; they are songs about being songs, in a band about being grindcore.

This fits with where this album was in the death metal and grindcore arc. By 1992, all of the fundamental statements of the genre had been made; it then attempted to prove itself and differentiate itself, leading to a spate of “technical” and experimental albums in late 1992 and 1993.

Necrony fits in here by taking what might have been a Carcass or Carbonized tribute band and dressing it up with technical instrumentalism, adding more atmosphere and some oddities, but ultimately, the more these musicians demonstrate their musical knowledge, the more these songs lie bare as basic and unexpressive.

Tags: 1993, Grindcore, necrony