NECRONOS – Charred Tongue

vote
6.5

• Bands:
  NECRONOS
• Duration: 00:33:08
• Available from: 01/13/2024
• Label:

• Chaos Records

At the crossroads between bestiality, technique, tradition and an oblique look at what is deformed and reprehensible the world has to offer, the crowding is notable. That whole current of particularly dark, angular, grim death metal, devoted to dense and malignant sounds, has a very high number of exponents, with the relatively high possibility of fishing for new notable names, like coming across some anonymous copier of other people's lessons. When you meet a new exponent of this death formula, it is therefore legitimate to have a hint of initial distrust, considering the inflation in this specific circle of metallic hell.
The preamble is useful to introduce those daring newcomers who answer to the name of Necronos. Mexicans, we know very little about them, except that their members have gained previous experience in niche groups such as Darkside Ritual, Muerto, Summoning Death and that “Charred Tongue” is their first official record release. To testify to the enthusiasm for this new adventure, at the end of 2024 our band even went on tour in Europe together with Goath, a German black/death metal band. As if wanting to get ahead of the times, wanting to make inroads among European metal fans as soon as possible.
“Charred Tongue” is a record that tries to put together different visions of death metal, finally arriving at a synthesis that can satisfy everyone, both those who like a reinterpretation as pure and faithful as possible to the key characteristics of the genre, and those who willingly look at contaminations and complications, just don't digress into too bizarre avant-gardisms.
Initially, the album stands out above all for its grim hostility, straddling early Morbid Angel, the suffocating darkness of modern Canadian and Australian death metal, a moderate taste for dissonance a la Gorguts and Immolation. A death metal streaked with black – due to the damned and sulphurous atmospheres – which has its center of gravity in a chaotic guitar chaos but of excellent technical level, in hammering vocalizations its wildest and most anti-human element (in this recalling the triple vocal assault of the Mitochondrion) and in the spasmodic rhythms a deadly propulsion. The opener “Bone Process” therefore knows how to hit hard quite quickly, only signaling a certain structural rigidity and the absence of peculiar elements, which could make the Necronos more easily distinguishable.
Gradually, “Charred Tongue” gains breath and a relative airiness, justifying the rather substantial lengths of the individual tracks and giving the idea that the band also knows how to compose meaningful songs, not just single furious and convoluted sections, but piled up next to each other to others with little clarity. The sibylline dissonances know how to create clouds of anguishing tension and in general the group gains points when it makes the doom component rise, giving it body and soul, thickening and fattening the guitar and rhythmic textures. How eloquent it appears in the second track “Cryptagathon” or in the final “Reap The Cosmos”.
Another perhaps trivial fact, speaking of death metal, but not to be taken for granted when the sound material is so leaden and suffocating, is the desire to indulge in pure headbanging movements. Maybe not always showing off who knows what flashes of genius, even if this contributes to making the sound experience relatively streamlined, avoiding falling prey to solutions that are as barbaric as they are monotonous.
Despite some flashes here and there and, indeed, an overall approach to the work that is competitive by the standards of today's death metal, “Charred Tongue” remains a decent but absolutely average release. Necronos know how to hammer hard with a minimum of style, yet they do nothing to clearly stand out among the mass of releases on the death metal circuit. There is the right determination, a sufficiently developed compositional ability, the ability to vary the tones and atmospheres, but at the moment we stop a few steps before entering not let's say among 'those that count', but also just among the emerging realities truly worthy of note. Those who follow the trend of the most troublesome and unhealthy death/black metal with interest will still have something to eat: there are the premises for more compelling future moves than what “Charred Tongue” now has to offer.