Review by Michael on April 24, 2025.

Five long years after Misanthrophic Breed the morbid storytellers Lik are back with a vengeance. Kicking off with "Deceased" we all get want we want to hear. Some classic HM-2 riffs in the vein of Dismember, super groovy and peppered with some malevolent vocals and painful screams. That's a really good one to start with and puts the bar pretty high for the rest of the album. Also "War Praise" goes into the same direction although the guitar leads are more Maidenesque, just like what Dismember did on their 1995 release "Massive Killing Capacity". Damn, this one is already thirty years old but it still kicks ass. And just like they did back a long time ago, the same do Lik on Necro: taking out some speed here and there to focus more on some groovy, a certain morbidity spreading atmosphere in some of their songs. Of course you can find a lot of brutality in the aforementioned songs and some others but this may be their most diverse album so far.

It starts at the halftime of the album with "Morgue Rat". This one is almost some kind of death metal blues, like a ghastly poisonous fog creeping out of a spooky crypt to infect and possess some harmless victims. That one is a really evil and slow song with very sinister vocals and sick guitars which also could have been on Autopsy's "Mental Funeral".

Another doomy one is "In Ruins" and if you just listen to the first seconds of that song, you should be having one certain British band in mind which brought death-doom to life. Got it? Yes, sure, I mean Paradise Lost. That's just a snapshot of the song because that reminiscence doesn't last too long but the Swedes have a good reason to quote Paradise Lost. Why? Well, they got Nick Holmes as guest vocalist on that song.

But that's it with the slower funeral dances. Between these two songs are some other breakers like "Shred To Pieces" that works like a strong cup of coffee to get you out of the doom-laden trance and also a song like "The Stockholm Massacre" wakes you up again.

Also the production is super powerful, the guitars sound super buzzsawing and the drums mostly are thundering like hell. Only the cymbals sometimes sound a little bit tinny. Also the vocals are clear to understand and sound very dark and sick. All in all this one is a rich and saturated production no one should be complaining about.

It becomes pretty clear that Lik have widened their musical influences on Necro so it takes a little bit more time to get into the album. It isn't such a straightforward thing like their masterpiece Carnage or its predecessor but still really kicks ass. Maybe the one or the other may not be too happy with the slower songs (especially those who adore "Carnage") but at the right time, they show the right effect. Especially the album closer "Rotten Inferno" with its super atmospheric outro turned out great.

Rating: 8 out of 10