Lik – Necro

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8.0

• Band:
  Lik (Stockholm)
• Duration: 00:40:44
• Available from: 04/18/2025
• Label:

• Metal Blade Records

Streaming not yet available

No more than the so -called novels, but obviously, at least as a group, not even considering veterans comparable to the founders of the genre, the Liks have been a constant presence in the European Death metal undergrowth for about a decade.
When not engaged with their band, guitarist/singer Tomas åkvik and bassist Joakim Antman perform with the most famous Bloodbath, while the guitarist Niklas “Nille” Sandin has been the bassist of the Katatonia for about fifteen years. Just he also quotes the excellent drummer Chris Barkensjö, already a member of Kaamos, Repupgnant and Witchery, among many. In short, we are talking about people of great experience, who always gives an outlet to his passion for the most traditional Swedish Death Metal.
The previous works of the group have always given a certain satisfaction, although perhaps judged derivative and predictable, remaining on a more than decent quality level and giving punctually at least some songs above the average.
So far, in short, the Liks have been seen as good Gregari, honest in their homage, certainly not the champions. “Necro”, however, seems to represent a change of pace for the quartet, which presents itself with an album that not only re -elaborates the sound of tradition, but does it with a skill and a dynamism that are rarely found in such an inflated genre.
This time the Swedish quartet hit everything, putting together a lot of truly inspired songs, starting with the sensational “Deceased” openner, whose bold incipit to the entombed is soon turned into a phrasennic Slayerian attack, and then enjoying groove peaks and various changes of time. It is a song that transmits a feeling of total domination, capable of immediately capturing the listener. Perhaps the best piece of the band's repertoire.
Following, other pieces that take the best from the vast tradition of the genre and rework it with the right panache, avoiding too brazen tributes, making it clear that these musicians are still able to stand on their legs. It is one thing to know the genre in Menadito, another to know how to compose beautiful songs. The Lik, after years of apprenticeship, seem to be mature in every sense. The Maidenian interventions of certain songs also tell us, which, of course, knows that you call the most melodic dysmember to the divestments, but without getting lost in a copy/glue effect or in a simplification all too trivial. Even when it turns on the melodic, the material maintains an excited development, presenting various flickers and registry changes.
There are obviously also the slowdowns, the gear drivers in an Autopsy key (“Morgue Rat”, “Rotten Inferno”), or a tragic mood on the lines of a pearl like “In Death's Sleep”, but, in fact, everything is always reworked in such a way as to be dynamic and curiously fresh.
We are surrounded by bands that swear loyalty to the old Stockholm scene and that put body and soul in this kind of revival, but most cannot really leave their mark. Moreover, it is precisely easy to be predictable and stratii, if you do not have so much inspiration from which to draw. Among the exceptions, we think of the Interrent – which, however, beyond a reduced discography, are still veterans – or the Undead Creep of the fantastic demo of 2009, or, again, the American Black Breath, unfortunately now disappeared. For the rest, a lot of profession, but little true quality.
Like the groups mentioned above, the “necro” Liks have that extra gear, an ability to write quality songs, to evolve a little as a band and to enrich their sound without betraying the principles of the old school at all. This is certainly their most solid and complete album. A real gift for those who are waiting for the record returns of Entombed and Dismember, who, indeed, would do well to look around before publishing something so much to definitively put their glorious name back into the circulation. Some flooded disciple, like today's Lik, is ready to challenge them and put them in difficulty on their own field.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ac-fndbgqrg