(written by Islander)
We’ve arrived at Part 9 of our expanding Most Infectious Song list, with three more songs today. I again didn’t have a cohesive organizing principle in mind when grouping these three together, though I couldn’t resist going necro with the last two (in more ways than one).
To check out the preceding 8 Parts of the list and to learn what the list is about, use this link.
DÖ
To help introduce the song I picked from DÖ‘s 2024 album Unversum, I’ll crib from Andy Synn’s review:
[T[his is one album you could, and should, get addicted to with ease. Just make sure to drink enough water, and remember the guiding mantra… “the psychotic drowns where the mystic swims”… and you’ll probably be ok!
Alright, you probably have to read the full review to understand what that means. If you do, you’ll see his references to “gargantuan guitars and groaning, low-end grooves,” “bad acid vibes,” “eerie proggy energy,” and “hypnotic hookiness.”
It’s the addictiveness of Unversum that’s a key criterion for my thinking about what to include on this list, and the song I picked is “Nuclear Emperor.” You’ll feel its grooves in your bones, the insidiously squirming and morbidly groaning meat-hook riffs will get stuck too, and the fanged snarls will raise goosebumps. And yeah, there’s bad acid vibes in it too.
https://doofficial666.bandcamp.com/album/unversum
https://www.facebook.com/astraldeathcult
NECROPHOBIC
Now we get necro with a song from In the Twilight Grey, the latest album from the long-running Swedish standard-bearers of black/death extremism, Necrophobic.
For a fulsome take on the album as a whole, I’ll refer you to DGR’s review. There, he delved into the ways in which the band both delivered the “bread and butter” fans have come to expect of them, while also including more “epic length” songs and “providing just enough horror-esque camp to be fun while still maintaining a grand-swath of the infernal to frighten.”
He observed, “They’re dangerous when they’re at their most earworm-esque,” and identified the album’s opening quartet of songs as in that vein, providing a very strong opening “which are like their own mini-EP of sharpened blades.”
It’s one of those lead-in songs, also released as a preceding video/single, that I picked for the list — “Stormcrow.” It kicks a listener’s adrenaline into overdrive with some assaulting black metal delirium, but also takes a detour into haunted realms, where the solo wails like a wraith.
https://necrophobic.lnk.to/
https://www.facebook.com/necrophobic.official
NECROWRETCH
To stay necro, my last selection today is a song from the newest Necrowretch album, Swords of Dajjal. This is one I very happily premiered in full all the way back in February 2024, and so this time I’ll crib from my own verbiage:
Each song on the new album functions as a prophecy, both past and future, where Dajjal (the Muslim antichrist) 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….
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.
For this list I most strongly considered all three of the songs that were released by Season of Mist as video/singles in the run-up to the album release — “Numidian Knowledge,” “Ksar Al-Kufar,” and “Dii Mauri.” The one I picked is the first of those, but I’ve included links to the other two because they’re also very much worth hearing and seeing.
I did find “Numidian Knowledge” to be the most infectious of the group, though the album is loaded with similarly infectious forms of exotic extremity. Another reason I picked it is because the video is quite good. It mainly focuses on the performers in the Necrowretch lineup, but it’s very well-made.
This song sets the hook with the tumble and boom of tom drums, which reappear in gripping ways. And then it’s all about the whir, the electrifying vibrations of sinister chords that writhe and gloriously rise — although the music does soften, and in doing so because more mysterious and more evocative of the Middle East. The scorching vocal chants are absolutely demonic all by themselves.
https://necrowretch.bandcamp.com/album/swords-of-dajjal
https://www.facebook.com/Necrowretch