Necro Deathmort Music of Bleak Origin

The unending monotony of a calm ocean or a flat desert conceals a host of minor details that the mind will naturally begin to arrange into patterns if you stare for too long. In a similar vein,  the  Rorschach inkblot rendered in igneous rock, that garnishes Necro Deathmort’s second album hides something that might conceivably be a totem pole of devil faces, who seem to acquire more demonic characteristics the longer you look. The churning symmetry of these etched volcanic ridges is an appropriate visual accompaniment for a form of music where numerous tiny embellishments have been micromanaged into each track, but which, taken as a whole, remains unrelentingly bleak.

Necro Deathmort play an instrumental fusion of hard rock and experimental electronica, seasoned with the occasional heavily treated vocal. There are moments that could conceivably work as part of a film soundtrack: The airless drone of Moon, or a short passage in Devastating Vector, when a steady current of synth pulses rises out of a dissonant jumble of electronic percussion.  On the whole the music has too much presence to do anything other than dominate a given multimedia partnership. It’s too dense and too overpowering to accompany anything but the most abstract of imagery.

Many of the songs have a predatory air about them, building a non-linear momentum  as they perpetually advance upon the listener. The Heat Death of Everything is a searing haze of blazing cymbals and blasts of guitar that resemble clouds of caustic steam issuing from fissures in the earth’s crust. Likewise the menacing bass-heavy power chords of Uberlord make a lot of noise, but in this case it’s all posture and build-up with no pay off. The most interesting part of the track is the irregular ticking beat in the background that sounds like a clockwork mechanism being wound.  

Ultimately it’s the minor details that provide the variation that elevates Necro Deathmort above the humdrum. The static-tinged drum sound that opens Temple of Juno casts the band as a radio tuning itself in. Jaffanaut’s dirty electro-funk squelch, compressed down to a vibration, sounds like the toxic by-product of a more beautiful piece of music. The song’s more brazen elements - the live drums and belt-sander guitar - wrap around delicate layers of bleeps, chimes, and ambient noise, which are unevenly stacked on top of each other in a manner that suggests that the whole sonic edifice could topple over at any given moment.   

Music of Bleak Origin’s nine tracks segue coherently into each other. Clearly the album is meant to be heard in one sitting. It remains to be seen how many listeners can tolerate 48 minutes of something so utterly draining. Having reached the point in Moon where the amelodic synth drone momentarily dissipates, leaving a barely audible cymbal adrift in an ambient vacuum, I found myself wishing for the lush harmonies of The Beach Boys, the timely arrival of The Jackson Five, or even a passing trio of singing chipmunks, if only to add a dash of colour.

Necro Deathmort have recently been collaborating with visual artists in their live shows. The live arena may well be the optimal medium for the band. A small enclosed venue where the audience are just another object in the room for this intense and occasionally overwhelming music to travel through.