Necronomicon

Though active since 2003, Peruvian death metallers Evil Damn’s debut album has only just arrived to follow their sporadic discography of EP’s, splits and demos. This Lovecraftian monstrosity was unleashed via Hells Headbangers Records on October 29th 2021.

Brooding soundscapes begin our cosmic ascension in eerie fashion complete with incantations, certainly capturing the Lovecraftian theme while not overdoing it. Punchy riffs and towering drums fire into a monstrous conjuration of pure old school death metal with thrashing beats and ferocious guitars warping together alongside some powerful and vitriolic vocals. Like waves crashing against the skull, each blistering idea is a fluid continuation of the last while definitive in their own right as a piece of furious music. Diabolical savagery is in no short supply on this album as we see glorious lead work meet the frantic rhythmic battery and continually Evil Damn carve their own way in the paths of early death metal pioneers, blending tradition with innovative ideas to give us something that feels like a lost gem of the old school with plenty of their own eldritch ideas heavily imbued in the mix.

Blending rather primal and urgent sounding death-thrash with technicality (more in the vein of Gorguts and Morbid Angel than say Necrophagist), this music certainly has the frenzied manner of storytelling that many of HP Lovecraft’s tales utilise while giving those expansive and otherworldly tendrils space to musically grow with the more hostile technical contortions. The dense and weighty production is perfectly suited to the crushing array of astounding drum work that is a perfect backbone to this cosmic entity with inhuman, angular riffing that blends into convulsing leads and invocational vocals. Channeling the Great Ones into such extreme music always feels like the perfect meeting in theme, aesthetic and sound for me as proven time and time again, especially in the underground. Evil Damn certainly add a worthy angle on this and are a valuable asset to the world of Lovecraftian death metal.

From the more traditionally killer songs such as “Beast Of Ryleh” and “Darkness Will Remain” through to the over 12 minute opus that is the title track “Necronomicon” there is a consistent aggression and barbarity to their playing which hits hard while not being afraid to use nuance and skill to expand upon a given idea. Vanquishing any potential accusations of trendiness or derivativeness, Evil Damn take all of the essential elements of early and even proto-death metal and give it a sort of overhaul with their own creativity while never allowing that to cause the sacrifice of integrity. This is a band who are clearly devoted to the ways of tradition but do not fear or shy away from having a personality of their own. A howling cacophony of might and mystique that will grip anyone who takes death metal seriously with a triumphant blend of Lovecraftian eeriness, charnel despair and totally frenetic brutality that ties together into a well-woven dark tapestry of dread from the outer voids.

Innovative yet regressive in equal measure may seen like a complete oxymoron, but this is a superb example of how magnificently ancient death metal can have fluorescence injected without ruining the morbid feel of the music. “Y’ai ‘ng’ngah, Yog-Sothoth h’ee – l’geb f’ai throdog uaaah.”

Written for www.nattskog.wordpress.com

Well, it took the best part of twenty years, but Peru’s Evil Damn have offered their first full length LP to posterity. Sticking largely with Hells Headbangers quest to comfort the timid with familiar styles, this album fails to break any boundaries in a distinctive way. However, it has a few things going for it that make it worth closer attention. ‘Necronomicon’ harks back to an older school of death metal, a wonderful brew of thrash, hardcore punk, early black metal, and of course the begins of the fledging style of death metal. The cover art and title of this work should dispel any myths that we’re getting earth shattering conceptual material here, but this is a tight and rewarding brew of early extreme metal stylings regardless.

Sure, we could look to Sarcofago (a cover of ‘Christs Death’ is deployed to close the album), early Sepultura, Grotesque, Bathory, and Hellhammer as all obvious influences. But the end result on ‘Necronomicon’ could actually be more closely summed up as a thrashy version of ‘Altars of Madness’. The thing about opting for Lovecraft as the chief inspiration for a metal band is the responsibility it places on musicians. One cannot just borrow the language, concepts, and ideas of Lovecraft’s stories, the music itself must be imbued with a sense of the alien, the other, the unknown. That’s why so many artists opt for a form of angular and brooding technical death metal as the ideal compositional style for invoking many tentacled monsters and faceless horrors.

Evil Damn take a more direct approach. But they haven’t simply opted to lift their chosen subject matter and place it on a rather basic form of blackened thrash metal. They have supplemented this format with creepy guitar leads, tritone breakdowns, wild vocal ejaculations, and subtle atmospheric inflections. Guitar solos often feel like they were composed first on a clean setting – or maybe even a piano – to ensure that the melodies were suitably haunting, before transposing them onto an overdriven guitar and set to fast paced thrash drumming. Standard Slayer style atonality is offset by tremolo scale runs that are just so early Morbid Angel that at times – were it not for the more direct (although no less tight) drum style – one could be forgiven for thinking this was an act of plagiarism.

The production betrays its modern context however. Everything is just a bit too clean and immediate for this form of horror-based thrash. The vocals are suitably atmospheric, but the drums and the guitars are overly clinical in their finish. Whilst from a purely musical standpoint this allows us to admire the tight musicianship on display here, one can still wonder whether a few more aesthetic flourishes – overly zealous reverb, a cavernous snare sound, excessive feedback – might have helped the music to convey its subject matter more effectively.

That being said, Evil Damn can still claim to have crafted a perfectly balanced interpretation of pre-1990 extreme metal, both enriched by occult aesthetics yet replete with well crafted musical architecture. They do just enough in terms of idiosyncratic guitar leads, monstrous vocal play, and occult weirdness (especially on the lengthy title track) to make ‘Necronomicon’ standout from the pack as far as unapologetically retro metal goes.

Originally published at Hate Meditations