Iron Bonehead – Out Now.

Though a huge fan of the Canadian Metal scene since the mid 80s, I admit that the name Necroholocaust meant absolutely nothing to me prior to being granted access to “Holocaustic Goat Metal” – the album whose review you’re currently reading. A quick search on the Internet provided some pretty useful information.

Apart from the fact that they are one of the officially three bands around the world using the same name and playing a similar style of music (remaining two hail from Brazil and Singapore respectively), this Canadian quartet is one of the few bands that I know that has an eleven-year recording history (two demos, nine splits and one compilation) prior to releasing a full-length album.

Impressed by this revelation and eager to find out what their music sounds like I began listening to the nine compositions on offer.

The first couple of spins were not at all encouraging, as I did find myself struggling to cope with layers upon layers of generic sounding riffs, terribly-sounding rhythmically-intense drum beats and deep growling vocal influenced but not at all comparable to those of Chris Barnes (ex-Cannibal Corpse, current Six Feet Under frontman).

Even though the album’s ‘underground’ production did not improve with time, my understanding of what these guys are trying to achieve did slightly and that ensured that future listening attempts were not too painful in comparison to the first few ones.

Still, the truth of the matter is that the nature of the material on offer and the levels of intensity employed are so aggressive that only truly seasoned extreme Death Metal fans will manage to cope with and indulge in them on a regular basis.

Following a fifteen second eerie intro entitled “Rise Of Antichrist (Victory Command)”, “Sadomasochrist” will blast its way through your speakers featuring an interesting mix of Blasphemy inspired riffs and Barnes-approved growls.

The follow-up “Altar Of Plagues” would have been a pretty boring piece of music had it not featured a pleasant groovy melody in its closing part while “Slaughter The Lamb” indulges in one two many rhythmical and thematic changes, thus lacking both in integrity and cohesiveness.

“Defile The House Of God” is a predictable but non-offensive fast-tempo piece that nicely paves the way towards the early Napalm Death sounding, Punk infused ditto “Deathraid Of Intolerance” which concludes the first side of the vinyl version of the album.

“Inverted Christ” finds the band attempting to create something interesting by combining a number of different ideas but an incomprehensible deterioration in the sound quality of the drums seems to work against them while things somewhat improve in the vocally Deicide-influenced follow-up “Infinite Death Prophecy”.

The title of the weirdest composition of the album goes hands-down to “Bleed the Baphomet” – a fast paced but equally atmospheric piece which features one of the longest eerie outros in living memory.

As I mentioned earlier in this review, “Holocaustic Goat Metal” is the kind of album that will only really appeal to a very specific type of Metal fans – those of you who are truly accustomed to speed, aggression and production values that most people would consider to be below par.

With improvement being an integral part for any future success for this band, it is encouraging to find such tendencies in the nine compositions on offer – only time, however, will tell if the right lessons have been learned.

John Stefanis

Rating: *** (3.0/5.0)

Featured Artist: JOSH TAERK

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Power Plays w/c 9 December 2024

In this sequence we play ‘The Best of 2024′ GRTR! reviewer selections

Featured Albums w/c 9 December 2024

09:00-12:00 The Best of 2024 (Melodic Rock)
12:00-13:00 The Best of 2003-2024 (Melodic Hard Rock)
14:00-16:00 The Best of 2024 (Singer Songwriter)