AN NCS PREMIERE: NAKED WHIPPER — “DEPRAVED TO THE BONE”

(written by Islander)

I don’t think I’d heard of Naked Whipper until Neill Jameson mentioned their forthcoming album not once but twice in his year-end articles at NCS, as something to look forward to in January. He made the same observations on social media. Just about every time, he included exclamation points. I began to think that was part of their actual name: “Naked Whipper(!)”

And then serendipitously we got asked to host this premiere. Sadly, I discovered that exclamation points aren’t part of their official name. Happily, I discovered why Neill was always adding that punctuation.

One reason is that their new album, Chapel Defilement, is the band’s first release of any kind since 1995, so there’s the surprise that comes from thinking something’s dead and dusted and then suddenly seeing it breathe again. But there’s another reason, which you’re about to discover.

The other reason of course is the music.

You can listen to the band’s last release before this new one — the 1995 EP Moloch: Acid Orgy, which Iron Bonehead Productions reissued a couple years ago on CD and vinyl (along with their debut album Painstreaks) — and get ripped up, run over, and defiled by it.

That EP is rough, raw, wild, and wicked, a violently depraved adrenaline burst of “blackgrind” probably before anyone started using that label. The riffing is dense, churning, writhing, caustic, dirty, and deeply penetrating. The piercing snare strikes sound like a madman furiously hammering nails into your skull. The bass throbs as if in the final plunging thrusts before ejaculation. The vocals are flat-out rabid. Thirty years later, the EP is still a big eye-opener. So is the immediately preceding debut album.

(The Iron Bonehead reissue of Moloch includes the band’s first self-titled EP from ’93, and that’s also included in the YouTube stream I linked above. There was obviously a significant step up in production quality between that one and the ’95 EP.)

And then you can quickly jump from that last release right into “The Swinepriest Bedlam,” which was the first single from Naked Whipper‘s new album. It doesn’t sound like a 30-year jump at all, but still very much in line with what Naked Whipper were doing in ’95.

The production quality is more advanced, producing a more powerful and defined yet still filthy and caustic sound, but the music is once again a vicious and bestial riot, delivering a ruinous beating, crazed and corrosive riffage, and a tandem of monstrous roars and scorched-earth screams.

And now you can jump from that to the song we’re premiering now — “Depraved to the Bone“. The song could hardly be better named. But in addition to channeling depravity, the music also sounds haughty and cruel. The drumming veers from lightning-fast fusillades to big booms and bracing gallops. The riffing similarly veers, engaging in orgiastic swarms but also brazenly slashing, miserably moaning, and feverishly writhing.

Through it all, the high/low vocals are absolutely berserk, even more variably inhuman and terrorizing than what you’ll find in those records from the ’90s.

Chapel Defilement as a whole contains 9 more compact tracks of slaughtering debauchery besides these first two, and a couple of short intro pieces, for 13 in all and about 34 minutes of music. It’s adorned with throwback cover art from Chris Moyen (a piece that’s close kindred to the cover art he did for Naked Whipper‘s 1995 album Painstreaks).

The album will be released on January 31st by Iron Bonehead Productions on CD and vinyl LP formats. Orders will be accepted then.

IRON BONEHEAD:
https://www.ironbonehead.de
https://ironboneheadproductions.bandcamp.com

NAKED WHIPPER:
https://www.instagram.com/naked_whipper_