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NECROPHAGIA
Moribundis Grim

Time To Kill (2024)
Rating: 5.5/10

I honestly don’t know how I feel about a posthumous Necrophagia opus. The album is basically haunted by the last vocal recordings of founder Killjoy (who passed away in March 2018), the result being a somewhat patchy affair littered with rough but certainly not ready demo recordings where the remaining members are joined by Mirai Kawashima from Sigh on keyboards, former Necrophagia member Titta Tani on drums and Incantation frontman John McEntee contributing additional vocals.

Yes, there remains the horror obsessed dynamics such as the opening tribute to the 1981 Italian flick The House By The Cemetery, but musically I think this would have benefitted from being an EP as only the first few tracks are worthwhile. Anyway, ‘Mental Decay’ with its thrashing mayhem and ‘Bleeding Torment’ are lean enough examples of the band at their menacing best, the latter opting for a Black Sabbath chugging.

However, the live version of ‘The Wicked’, from 2017, and a cover of Samhain’s ‘Halloween 3’ plus the two instrumentals – ‘Scarecrows’ and ‘Sundown’ – would normally appear as pointless if it was not for the band’s way of keeping Killjoy’s last moments on this planet alive. Hopefully this will be the last entry in the Necrophagia discography and Killjoy’s ghost can now be laid to rest.

Neil Arnold

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