AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): NECROWRETCH — “SWORDS OF DAJJAL”

With 15 years of recordings and performances behind them, the French extreme metal band Necrowretch likely need no introduction to the horned denizens of this site, nor any added fuel of anticipation for their forthcoming fifth album Swords of Dajjal, which we’re presenting today on the eve of its release by Season of Mist.

But it’s worth knowing that the new album was one of those unexpected fruits of the covid pandemic, which ruined the band’s touring plans in support of their just-released fourth album but provided a pause they used for the creation of this new fifth full-length. And thus Necrowretch spent more time writing and fine-tuning Swords of Dajjal than they’d ever spent on previous releases.

Not only that, the band changed their gear, their sound, their tuning, and even initially wrote the songs on acoustic 12-string guitar. The result, as described by the band’s vocalist and rhythm guitarist Vlad, is the group’s “most black metal record, with splashes of death metal here and there”.

He adds: “Whereas on the previous album all tempos were pushed to the extreme, there’s far more variety here to be found. It also gave us free reins to reach a more mystical, Biblical if you will vibe”, fed by Vlad‘s experience living in Turkey in the late 2010’s.

photo by Léonor Ananké

And so, as the album’s title and cover art reveals, Necrowretch focused on the Dajjal character, “basically the antichrist in the Muslim religion”, as Vlad has said. “The Coran says that he’ll appear as a false prophet only to bring doom to this world, with an army of demons coming from the east.”

Each song on the new album functions as a prophecy, both past and future, where Dajjal plays the leading role. True to their conception, all the songs are… devils.

These devils assume different guises among the album’s eight songs, and even within the songs, which is a way of saying that Swords of Dajjal is Necrowretch‘s most diverse, most intricate, most startling, and most memorable album yet.

There are, of course, throughlines. The guitars ring like chimes, albeit chimes crusted with blood, clarion-toned but not too clean. They shiver in waves of frenzy, swirl like the heated air around an oasis, soar with raptor talons bared, and blare like hellish fanfares. They cut like sandstorms and spin the mind like carriers of exotic spells, sometimes joined by even more exotic and ancient acoustic instrumentation for added mesmerization.

Backing these whirling knives and beckoning incantations are momentous rumbling and wrecking bass lines and the kind of extravagant drum performances that threaten to steal attention away but are also very effective at getting heads moving and hearts racing.

Fronting these changing musical manifestations, Vlad expels strangulated regurgitations, rabid snarls, and explosive, fanatical screams at the red edge of extremity, all of them with a serrated edge too.

The tempos change relentlessly, allowing no room for a listener to get too comfortable with what’s happening, and the songs also prove to be both perpetually dynamic and wonderfully elaborate in other ways. The music channels racing and ravishing viciousness, spectacles of dire and daunting grandeur, troughs of hopeless agony, and… to repeat… intriguing but perilous spells born from demon depths.

The album also represents a rare union of conception and achievement. While the songs are multi-faceted in many, many ways, all of them do sound rooted in the mid-east, swathed in ancient and esoteric trappings, constantly beckoning with glowing eyes and authentically hellish all the way down their winding paths.

And with that, we’ll choke off our verbiage and let you experience these swords of Dajjal for yourselves:

Album Lineup:
Vlad – Vocals, Guitars
W. Cadaver – Lead Guitars
R. Cadaver (Live) – Bass
N. Destroyer – Drums

Swords of Dajjal was recorded at Studio Sainte Marthe in Paris with Francis Caste, who was also responsible for mixing and mastering. The attention-grabbing cover art was made by Stefan Thanneur/Manifeste.

Season of Mist recommends it for fans of Possessed, Dark Angel, Dissection, Necrophobic, and Merciless.

PRE-SAVE:
https://orcd.co/necrowretchswordsofdajjal

PRE-ORDER:
https://shop.season-of-mist.com/list/necrowretch-swords-of-dajjal

NECROWRETCH LINKS:
https://necrowretch.net/
https://www.facebook.com/Necrowretch
https://www.instagram.com/necrowretch
https://open.spotify.com/intl-fr/artist/0cIx910hgtpgvicBJv3ybq
https://necrowretch.bandcamp.com/