Review Summary: A great album for fans of shredding and death metal, and features some of the most amazing musicianship the genre has to offer. But this album certainly is not for everyone.
One of the reasons that I listen to metal and love it so much is because of the immense talents some of the genre’s musicians possess. There’s just nothing like flipping on an album like Death’s
The Sound of Perseverance or Between the Buried and Me’s
Alaska and just sitting back and absorbing all the album has to offer. Since I’ve always taken a liking to technical bands, I delved more into the technical death metal scene. After coming upon the now underground classic that is
None So Vile by Cryptopsy. It took me a while to get used to the band’s sheer brutality, but with time I came to love the album. The same can be said for Necrophagist.
Upon first hearing these guys almost a year ago with the song “Stabwound”, I loved and hated them at the same time. I loved them because I had never heard something so unrelentingly fast, technical, and brutal. The latter reason was the thing that turned me away, as I could not get used to vocalist and guitarist Muhammed’s incredibly guttural roars. And with time, I’ve come to truly appreciate Necrophagist for what they are: one of the most technical and amazing death metal bands I’ve ever listened to.
Onset of Putrefaction is a trip into the musical world of Muhammed Suicmez, the only person who recorded anything for this album. He recorded all of the guitar tracks, bass tracks, did vocals, and programmed the drumming. And after hearing what each instrument does on the album, you’d have to be a fool not to say that this man is a musical virtuoso. This album never misses a beat or note, it’s all incredibly tight and never loses track through all eight incredibly technical, and often random, tracks.
The real highlight of the entire album lies in Muhammed’s guitar playing. It’s simply some of the best shredding you’ll ever come across in the death metal scene. The opening track, “Foul Body Autopsy” is just short of two minutes and features brutal down-tuned death metal riffs, harmonized leads in the middle of doing vocals, as well as a blistering solo with some incredibly clean arpeggio sweeps. And it all comes at you at incredible speeds. It’s almost just
too much at times. Perhaps the finest moment in the album though, can be found in the seriously epic solo of “Advanced Corpse Tumor” in which Suicmez slows things down a bit and puts much more emotion than his typical million-miles-an-hour shred fest. The solo is long, and features a great backing riff to accompany it. It’s great songwriting and is a short break from the rest of the album’s furious onslaught of insanity.
The bass doesn’t have as much time to shine as it did on their following album,
Epitaph, but still has a few moments to play out. This is mostly because Epitaph had an actual bass player and not just Muhammed playing. But there are still moments of some tapping leads. It’s not as much as there could have been, but it’s certainly not bad. The drums, for being programmed, sound pretty real. They actually sound very similar to the drums in
Epitaph. They’re very technical, and I was very surprised to hear that Muhammed went through that much trouble in programming a drum machine. It’s just what the album needed and constantly features blast beats and double bass annihilation; ideal for this type of sound.
The problem with this album though is that it has extremely limited appeal. Fans of death metal and probably some shredders will flock to this album and say it’s amazing, but those not used to this genre of music won’t like it in the least. The guttural vocals were even a turn off for me at first, and I was a metal fan at that point. The extreme technicality might send others packing their bags as well. Not everyone wants to hear an extreme song that is constantly changing, and I understand that. There are also some moments of weirdness, like the main riff to “To Breathe in a Casket”, where it’s actually just obnoxious. If you’re into technical metal then pick this up soon. But if you’re looking for a band to tap your foot to, you’ve come to the wrong place.
Thor’s Top 3 from this album:
Foul Body Autopsy
Advanced Corpse Tumor
Fermented Offal Discharge
Final Rating: 4/5
