release date: September 28, 2018
label: El Pueblo Records
production: Necronomicon
rating: 8.5 / 10
Not the krautrockers of the same name. This Necronomicon are an old-school Teutonic thrash metal outfit from the German town of Lörrach. “Unleashed Bastards” is their ninth studio album overall, and the band has actually been at it for 34 years. Throw in their punk beginnings and it’s a full 37. With a ten-year break between 1994 and 2004, Necronomicon are today a byword for the absolute underground and one of the most carefully guarded German secrets of their genre. Unlike their peers from the same generation, especially the globally notorious ones (Sodom, Destruction, Kreator), and as an “absolute underground” band, they were no less important to the global invasion of Teutonic thrash metal in the late eighties. You really can’t get more “underground” or “subterranean” than Necronomicon.
“Unleashed Bastards” also follows the band’s established character and body of work, which is exactly what you’d expect. Evolution-wise it hooks up most logically with its predecessor “Pathfinder… Between Heaven And Hell” (2015), but otherwise the band stays completely true on the new album to everything they’ve built from the eighties to this day. Without Freddy and his fanatical drive and stubbornness, Necronomicon would have vanished from the planet long ago. His vocals remain the most recognizable trademark and the foundation that defines the band’s musical record. That whole essence, raw, razor-sharp, wrecking and uncompromising, leaving a feeling of absolute refusal to back down, would never grab so brilliantly alongside the devastating riff artillery and rhythmic steamrolling if it weren’t fronted by a voice as venomous as Freddy’s.
“Unleashed Bastards” leaves you with a feeling of rage and total revolt. Just as the title of Total Rejection promises, a track you can find on the band’s eighties demo tape. It’s been freshened up and re-recorded for the new album, bringing another authentic connection to the days of their birth, when Necronomicon played punk and were actually still called Total Rejection.
What really hits the spot on Unleashed Bastards is that restrained, primal, unadulterated character of eighties thrash metal fury, which has been matured and revitalized in the studio. Just one look at the cover proves it, bringing together all of the band’s iconography, i.e. the artistic milestones of the road they’ve traveled, right back to the debut “Necronomicon” (1986).
Over 51 minutes of music is perhaps slightly too much for an otherwise ambitious piece of work, since stylistically you get the band’s whole deal fast. After one or two tracks. On the new album Necronomicon keep up all that burning, high-octane rage, anger, untamed fury, doggedness and real savagery, and they actually deliver the finest moments that the trail of Teutonic thrash has staked out in metal. The guitar phrases serve up a pleasing helping of variety. It’s almost needless to add that they’re of course built on half-step riffing, with the vocals taking up a huge amount of space, which often pushes the guitar soloing into the background, or to put it another way, into an inferior position. The album is full of shorter but punchy instrumental guitar bits, and Necronomicon have also clearly matured, putting more attention in their later years on musicality (three-part harmonies in the intros and outros).
One for fans of Teutonic thrash, but also Overkill, early Slayer, and let’s not forget the complex, hard-to-pin-down thrash doctors of the era, Switzerland’s Coroner! “Unleashed Bastards” will gratefully scrub out your ear canals, while for the unprepared this mouthful of an ominous, merciless invasion of old-school European thrash riffs can cause permanent hearing damage and bleeding, or at the very least severe trauma. Let’s hope the album gets the band onto European stages, because they deserve a proper showcase. Let’s not forget: thrash metal always hits hardest and most authentically live rather than on record, and that has definitely always been true of the cult Necronomicon too.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
track list:
01. Burn And Fall
02. Leave The Lights On
03. Total Rejection
04. Malevolent
05. We Did We Do We Always Burning
06. Imperial
07. My Name Is Vengeance
08. Forbid Me For Living
09. Unleashed
10. Religion Live Fast
11. Personal Enemy
12. The Nightmare Continues
lineup:
Volker “Freddy” Fredrich – vocals, guitar
Michael Kusch – guitar
Marco Lohrenz – bass
Christopher Speich – drums
