ANTROPOMORPHIA – ‘EVANGELIVM NEKROMANTIA’
By Alan Oliver
This is the second full length album from these Dutch death metallers. It is the follow up to 1998’s ‘Pure’ which is a 14 year gap but then the band have been on hiatus for a chunk of those years. The cover is your first look at this release and the artwork is a lesbo-necro-paranormal affair with a skeletal audience giving you an insight into the style and lyrical content contained within.
So as you may guess from the imagery Antropomorphia play death metal from the darker side of the fence. The core to their sound has a brutal death metal style with variations such as a more black metal element to the faster sections. The song structures remind me of Deteriorot for example the slow with the fast pace changes but with those extra embellishments. ‘Nekrophilian Mass’ is a perfect example to this, it’s lingering heavy played chords intro played with a repetitive echo tinged guitar melody over the top. Machine gun drumming is backed with a hefty rumbling bass sound, and again with the guitar melody played over the top of the other instruments. The vocals are a deep throaty growl which fits the essence of the music perfectly as it allows them to switch styles of play but keep a continuity that sounds good in either. Heavy repetitive riffs lay the basis with the guitars building above.
‘Debauchery In Putrefaction’ has a sinister, almost doomy start giving a foreboding atmosphere, it later breaks to the token fast and slower breaks style prevalent on this release. The whole track has a brooding heavy buzz about it showing more elements of diversity. ‘Anointment By Sin’ rips straight along with a fast melody. This track showcases the excellent drumming with well worked changes from rapid blast to an almost metronomic consistency. The guitar melody played over the type is slightly off key for variance and is matched with vocals that have a slight echo effect, another quality touch.
‘Impure Desecration’ follows a in a similar vein with slow, plodding doomy start with high end melody over the top. Slower vocals complement this until they once again break into their trademark style. There’s also an effective use of a second vocal and some agonizing moans for good measure. ‘Psuchagogia’ has a more black metal feel with a faster buzz saw guitar sound and the bass higher up in the mix. Yet again it does break into their continuity of sound but also adds in an almost jazz like off key guitar melody over much more structural drum pace, backed with minimal basslines to a point where the melody drops out completely and is replaced with sinister drawn out chords. The final track, which is also the album title, throws us off tangent with an instrumental. The thunderstorm backdrop moulds an atmospheric scene which unusually has a bass solo for melody which is both repetitive and hypnotic stopping only to change melody for the latter section. An unusual twist that I can’t decide whether it enhances the rest of the album or is just feels like an add on.
Having listened to this album a couple of times I liked it the more I listened to it. It’s a strong album with no unnecessary changes of genre or style you usually get nowadays. There is a lot here for fans of bands such as Immolation and particularly God Dethroned, even earlier Septic Flesh. Nothing groundbreaking but a good solid style with continuity as well as enough variation to prevent the music becoming stagnated. If you like your death metal on the darkened side then you could do far worse than this album. 7.5/10
Check out more on Antropomorphia and order the album from Metalblade here.
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