Bloodhymns

Summary Judgment, oh how I have missed thee. Hours of work and other commitments have kept me from you, but no more. Now that the summer is drawing close I will re-devote myself to you. Our first victim? Bloodyhymns by Swedish black/death/thrashers Necrophobic. These guys have been around since '89 and although they haven't done anything groundbreaking, they have a solid discography that is worth the time of fans of the Swedish death metal sound.

Mixing the Swedish death metal sound with some black metal, Necrophobic have managed to create forty six minutes of blasphemous metal. The music is standard Swedish death style and the production is classic Sunlight sound. The songs are high tempo for the most part, the riffs are somewhat generic but are plenty catchy and make for good headbanging material. What I like the most about this album are the great lyrics. The first track, "Taste of Black", has some choice blasphemy: "Confront me now/ weak inferior christian filth/ Turn to your faith/ My resurrection will be your fall." No, it's not brilliant or thought provoking, but it sure is fun! At least my Orthodox Catholic roommate thinks so.

While Necrophobic are clearly death metal, they certainly do embody some of the black metal spirit. The songs surround the same basic theme, anti-christianity and blasphemy, and the style is vaguely reminiscent of De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas era Mayhem, the major differences being the vocals and the death metal styled drumming. But one can tell that several of the riffs came straight from that classic Mayhem album.

My major complaint of Bloodhymns is that it does get old quite quickly. The songs are all very similar and don't offer anything new. Thus I can only recommend this album to die hard fans of this style. It is done quite well, but again is nothing truly noteworthy.

Originally Published @ www.metaljudgment.com (c) 2003