If you browsed our site yesterday, then this post will come as no surprise. Yesterday I wrote about the existence of a recently revealed “supergroup” whose band name — Necromancing the Stone — I thought was a winner and whose members consist of these dudes:
James Malone (Arsis) (guitars)
Ryan ‘Bart’ Williams (ex-The Black Dahlia Murder) (bass)
Jeramie Kling (The Absence) (drums)
Justin Wood (Brimstone Coven) (guitars)
John Williams (Brimstone Coven) (vocals)
As reported yesterday, the band have recorded a three-song EP named Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead that was to be released today. It will be available on Bandcamp, and shirts are already available at this location. The EP was mixed by Peter Tagtgren at Studio Abyss, with additional mixing by Eyal Levi at Audiohammer Studios. The EP’s cover art, which you can see next, was created by Mark Riddick: At this writing, only one song has now been made available for streaming — it’s name is “From Graves To Infamy”. More about that in a minute — but first, the cover art:
Yesterday, I expressed curiosity about what the music would sound like, given the presence of both some thrashers and some Sabbathian doom purveyors in the ranks of this band. Granted, we only have one song to go by at the moment, but “From Graves To Infamy” doesn’t sound much like what you’ll find in the discography of any of the bands on the resumes of Necromancing’s members, though it comes closer to the Arsis end of the spectrum than the Brimstone Coven end.
It’s a fast-paced, riff-loaded, hook-laden hybrid of power metal and thrashy, technically adept melodic death metal, with a mix of arena-ready, soaring clean vocals and nasty growls. It’s an interesting mix of older and more modern styles that got my adrenaline pumping, and it makes me even more curious to hear the other two songs.
Check out this first offering on either of the two players below.
https://www.facebook.com/necromancingthestone
https://necromancingthestone.bandcamp.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRIjtvfxTpg
3 Responses to “NECROMANCING THE STONE: “FROM GRAVES TO INFAMY””
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Riffs are great, but those cleans are absolutely awful. I might give the whole EP a fair shake, but this comes off as a haphazard collision of Arsis and doom to me.
Decent riffs, awful vocals all around. Boring, pass.
It sounded like thrashy melodeath with less growls, and the riffs sound more like guitar exercise patterns than a worthwhile song. The clean vocals were very off-putting. IMO the main riff was good and everything else was just filler, which would be passable if the vocals could fill in the gaps. Neo-classical scale runs + palm muted pedal-note riffs + abstractly “epic” lyrics =/= traditional metal, but if we ignore that part of the bio than you just get pretty stock modern metal riffs and some grating vocals. Anyway, it’s just one song so we’ll see what happens next. Still hoping they can live up to the hilariously rad band name!