NEKROKULT
Desecration Of Blood
Self-released (2017)
Rating: 8/10
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A wheezing organ introduces us intrepid listeners to the debut album from Brazilian black thrashers Nekrokult. I don’t know a great deal about the trio but as soon as the opus kicks in I don’t care, immediately swept up in this speeding rust-bucket of a record that chokes up 36 minutes of devastating, gnarly, speed.
Fans of my recent review of the debut full-length album from Hellripper (Coagulating Darkness) may also want to check out this fetid, stormy rancid rumble constructed by members Hoertel (vocals), Bitch Hünter (guitar / drums) and Sub Umbra (bass).
Let’s get straight to it… nine tracks (if you discount the intro and outro) of blackened, billowing clattering black thrash, taking influence from the usual set of veteran punks, like Hellhammer, Bathory, Sodom etc. But this is still an infectious, raw and oily hell-noise, featuring some great melodies constructed on sharp, yet thick, sordid riffs and grizzly drum gallops. Vocally, it’s a menacing squawk – a little more than the dry, grey scathing rasp I was expecting – but when all this fetid slop comes together we really do get a treat. There’s the hammering pollution of the title track, the vile thunder of ‘Humanidade Podre’, and the misanthropist strains of ‘Satan Is Endless’ in which Hoertel barks, “I’m a messenger of hell, I’m a hell commander, I hate all life”. Fair enough mate.
It’s rollicking and, above all, riveting stuff. That gnarly, tolling, trudging with a slogging drum conjure up all sorts of Possessed / Voivod / Bathory / Hellhammer psychosis, only really separated again by those throaty yelps.
And the songs come thick and fast – all approved by Satan himself – as the trio comes wailing and flailing with ‘Black Forces’, ‘King Of Darkness’, ‘Minha Cova’ and ‘Total Funeral’, with each biting riff as sickly and as clawing as the last – the pace quickening as the caverns quake to the cacophony, the demonic riffs motioning like a rust-coloured pool, enticing the listener in under the spell of Hoertel’s desperate bark.
Black speeding metal at its most furious, evil and frightening, the opus is capped off by that wild, chaotic buzz of ‘Total Funeral’ before leaking into the unknown esoteric terrors of the outro, with the church organ allowing Nekrokult to slip off into the mist while we wait, shaking, for the next record.
There are times when I get bored of some genres, and the blackened thrash scene was one such example, but now we’ve had Hellripper and Nekrokult delivering such gems I find myself once again donning cloak and dagger and taking to the forest in search of a mobile phone signal to tell my mates to join the coven. The cult is alive!
Neil Arnold
