Necro

As much as we should continue to celebrate the depth and diversity of the current death metal scene, there is still nothing quite like being smashed in the face by a band like LIK. Over three previous albums, the Stockholm quartet have stabbed and sliced themselves into glorious infamy, with a sound that screams its devotion to the Swedish old school, but with levels of intensity that casually surpass any previous attempts at the same, semi-nostalgic approach. LIK are all about delivering a pure, undiluted death metal experience, and on their fourth full-length they deliver it again. “Necro” rips so hard and so fast that it should with a health warning: do NOT listen to this while driving or operating machinery. Seriously.

It is not that “Deceased” opens proceedings at lightning pace, it is just that even at a fairly solid mid-pace, LIK sound drunk on adrenalin and plugged into some fearsome, electrifying power source. Snare hits impact like elbows to the eye socket. Guitars grind and saw, awash with festering HM-2 filth. Singer Tomas Åkvik (also guitarist in BLOODBATH) barks and spits like an infernal master of ceremonies, feeding off the destruction. Yeah, this is straight-ahead, old-school death metal, but LIK are a shining example of a band that plays it like they really fucking mean it.

The songwriting is exceptional too. It cannot be easy to continually plunder the same narrow source of inspiration, but to do it with this much exuberance and freshness is truly remarkable. These songs are brutal and uncompromising to a fault, but from the MAIDEN-esque melodic flurries of “War Praise” to the harrowing, graveyard doom vibes of “Rotten Inferno”, “Necro” is anything but one-dimensional. In fact, it is an absolute joy to listen to a death metal album that exhibits such commitment to a noble cause, and that does so with imagination. Songs like the mid-paced macabre of “They” and the flat-out furious “Worms Inside” draw heavily from death metal’s primitive rudiments, but also from its post-CARCASS melodic era. The lurching horror of “Morgue Rat” proudly proclaims its debt to AUTOPSY, but LIK‘s monstrous four-man chemistry makes the sludgy, downtempo riffs connect with the same nose-flattening impact that frenzied sprints like “Shred Into Pieces” and “The Stockholm Massacre” have elsewhere. Much like their noted affiliates in BLOODBATH, LIK will always choose the heaviest option, and “Necro” is a testament to the wisdom of that choice. “In Ruins” is a spectacular piece of death metal songwriting: with its ghoulish, funereal intro, pounding, ENTOMBED-adjacent grooves and somber, sour-tasting melodies, it straddles at least three distinct strains of arcane DM, blending them with great skill. “Fields Of Death” is an act of all-out war rendered in pitch-black, bursts of ferocious speed offset by a haunting, coagulant dirge. The closing “Rotten Inferno” is like a grand re-opening of the gates of Hell, with riffs that slither and swarm, and tangible echoes of horrified, gothic doom, made all the more compelling by Åkvik‘s scabrous, spiteful narration.

Death metal can mean many things to many people, but for those who still crave a little common sense and certainty in this confused age, LIK are far closer than most to nailing the genre’s precious essence once and for all. “Necro” is a jolting dose of morbid electricity aimed squarely at those who understand that only death is real.