FMA Reviews: Necroven: Worship of Humiliation

Originally reviewed here.

Occult death metal is a style that has remained underground out of necessity. To say that the style is extreme is a massive understatement. Though it formed from the music of Morbid Angel, Incantation, and Immolation, it has progressed beyond even those dark and sinister boundaries that those bands pushed. This is evil music.

Necroven is an occult death metal band in the vein of Drawn and Quartered, Angelcorpse, Nox, Lecherous Nocturne, and other much more underground bands. The riffs are jagged and distorted. The drumming is typically blastbeat-driven though not entirely. The production is fairly murky but not to the extent that the music can not be heard. A lot of other occult death metal bands make the mistake of having too muddy of production and it all sounds like a sloppy mess. This is not pristine, but at least everything can be heard. It is the kind of production that sounds best with this music. The vocals are incredibly deep.

There are some issues with this though, which are somewhat common issues with occult death metal. There is not a lot of melody, which is to be expected, but going along with that is that there are not too many truly memorable moments. The songs tend to run together as well. Most of them do not feel like complete ideas, rather some riffs thrown together with some vocals over them that just sort of end at some point.

The music is certainly filthy and once in a while I am in the mood for some good occult death metal. The positives outweigh the negatives, but this is by no means a great album.