Necrovile – Engorging the Devourmental Void
The second full length offering by the death outfit Necrovile from Romania is a different and better experience than their first. The slams and ugliness and overall brutal ethic have been replaced by a crisper, catchier and more upbeat brand of death metal. There’s lots of nimble fretwork on display here and the album has more of an emphasis on catchy hooks and energy than atmosphere or brutality.
The deep guttural vocals are probably what prompt people to classify this as brutal death metal on the metal archives, but really, this music is pretty accessible death metal, certainly far less brutal than something like Hate Eternal in terms of how abstruse it is. Necrovile shuffles catchy hooks in fairly standard arrangements—these aren’t more complicated than Razor songs—throughout this platter. The riffs is occasionally complex, but these songs aren’t…and they don’t have to be. Although many brutal death metal bands prefer shorter songs (Pathology, Abominable Putridity, Kraanium, etc.) the arrangements are rarely as classically minded as are Ncrovile’s: The major part of this album is verses, choruses, departures and solos.
It’s very clear that these Romanian’s are having a good time playing a fun type of brutal death metal and their joy leaps out of the speakers. Maybe it doesn’t sound like a compliment when I refer to a brutal death metal album as joyous, but I mean it as one here. Things are pretty tight and simple, excepting the more complex track Submit to Dehumanization, which has more digressions and some weirdly out of sync blasting (the latter seeming out of place on this otherwise locked in album).
I’d like more thick chords, more slower moments, and more heaviness on their next release, but unlike the first Necrovile album, which is decent, but forgettable, Engorging the Devourmental Void is exciting and catchy “brutal” death metal with a a thrash ethic. It’ll either grab you right away—at song 1, opening riff—or not at all. – S. Craig Zahler
Lacerate Enemy Records
Worm Gear 