Prophet of Lepers

You may not be familiar with Navi, but perhaps you’ve heard of Luddite Clone. The latter had some minor success in the early 2000s due to being on Relapse (and therefore getting decent distribution). I bought that band’s “The Arsonist and the Architect” EP when it came out. Several of my friends loved it, along with the split with Burnt by the Sun. That stuff never clicked with me for some reason. I wasn't a massive fan of that ‘chaotic metallic noisy grindy core’ stuff that Relapse was putting out in the early noughties. It lacked a bit of simplicity, groove and atmosphere.

The Navi lineup on "Prophet of Lepers" is almost identical to the lineup that would subsequently form Luddite Clone, the only difference being the drummer. This demo feels more like death metal though, albeit with a strong dose of late 90s metalcore. Hailing from New Jersey, these guys sit somewhere between the hardcore scene of that area (e.g., Rorschach and Deadguy) and the equivalent death metal scene (e.g., Ripping Corpse and Damonacy). There are moments on this demo that echo what Ripping Corpse did on “Dreaming with the Dead”, and other shronky parts that sound more like something from “Screamin' with the Deadguy Quintet”. It is an interesting concoction that provides cast-iron proof that the two scenes were interconnected.

These four songs are tense, brief and aggressive. There is a bit of blasting (but not much). There is some Abnegation-esque chugging (that band is mentioned in the inlay). There are some riffs that sound like someone bashing your head around a lamppost. Check out the slow riff near the beginning of “Weathered”, which is heavy enough to put Damonacy to shame. There is a musicality and narrative to this stuff. It never veers on chaos for the sake of chaos (which hindered Luddite Clone, in my view). The reverence to both the hardcore and death metal scenes means that this demo avoids sounding too generic of either.

The demo is brief, and is hindered by a thin and wimpy sound (although I do like the 'biscuit tin' drums). This makes it difficult to appreciate in light of better recorded, similar music (such as all the aforementioned New Jersey bands). Personally, I like this more than Luddite Clone, although I'll admit that the latter was a more accomplished band. “Prophet of Lepers” is an interesting historical relic from the New Jersey scene, little more than that, but I enjoy it for what it is.