Necrophobic - Death to All

September 17, 2009

Reviewer: Matt

Death to All is Necrophobic’s sixth full length, another in a line of consistently quality releases from this long-running Swedish band.  And while stylistically treading water since their 1996 EP Spawned By Evil, Necrophobic have mastered their style with passion, professionalism, and superior musicianship, making Death to All a must-have for fans of blackened melodic death metal.

Necrophobic’s main detraction is the rhythmic familiarity of their riffs, a problem that has persisted since their 1993 debut, The Nocturnal Silence, possibly explaining why this album remains a largely overlooked classic of Swedish death metal.  On that album and all albums following, Necrophobic expertly mimic the basic riff-writing patterns of their contemporaries, demonstrating an unfortunate lack of the adventurousness of their more notable peers and remaining firmly within the strictly defined limits of their chosen genre.  Death to All continues the tradition of drawing liberally, at its most inspired, from early At the Gates and Dissection, and, at its least inspired, from Marduk and The Crown.  Unquestionably, Necrophobic are immensely proficient musicians, and their songwriting demonstrates apt creativity, so why they continue down the path of least resistance is rather puzzling.

But where Necrophobic clearly excels is at developing a harmonic theme.  Where individual riffs seem familiar, even formulaic at times, songs as a whole are arranged atypically, with an eye toward honest and thoughtful expressions of tension and mood, which are developed, as in all superior death metal, through naturalistic progressions of rhythmically and harmonically interrelated riffs.  This technique is where Necrophobic have succeeded most throughout their history and is what makes their early work, for all its sonic similarity to contemporaneous acts, so compelling.  The weak moments of Death to All, which thankfully are relatively sparse, are where they lazily relax into more predictable rock-based structures.  The best songs on the album, “Revelation 666” and “Temple of Damnation” unfold dramatically: where a particular riff seems so familiar that an astute student of metal will immediately recognize genre’s archetypal patterns and discern the song’s likely progression, Necrophobic satisfy the listener by eschewing formula and directing composition through surprising but coherent variations of earlier stated motifs.

Death to All demonstrates Necrophobic’s skill at creating exciting music in a genre that has largely worn out its welcome.  And while dedicatedly, perhaps stubbornly, resisting any impulse to stray outside the genre’s limited confines, Necrophobic is the unequivocal top contender for the throne Dissection abandoned over a decade ago.  It is their best album since 1997’s Darkside, and a worthy addition to the collection of any fans of mid-90s Swedish extreme metal.

Release Date: May 29th, 2009
Label: Regain Records

TRACK LISTING

1.  Celebration of the Goat
2.  Revelation 666
3.  La Satanisma Muerte
4.  For Those Who Stayed Satanic
5.  Temple of Damnation
6.  The Tower
7.  Wings of Death
8.  Death to All

Total playing time:  44:45

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