Ancient Necropsy

While employing the same nonstop, "can't understand SHIT!"-attack of incomprehensible deep grunt growling like the genre forefathers Brodequin for example, Ancient Necropsy even begs to differ in the vocal department. Yes, these are classic brutal death metal vocals but they still have a purified and abstract quality to them that is not to be found on those many records of expendable bands that want to be ugly, brutal and unpleasant without any real motivation or artistic vision behind it. The growls of Ancient Necropsy matter in terms of relevance in a genre that is drowning everything in harmless pig squeals and they hint at greater things to come with being a few steps above the pack.

Sweet mother Mary full of grace and bullshit, I adore this unique album like a little brother. How do you successfuly compliment a dude that couldn't find a skilled and fast enough drummer for his brutal death metal project and therefore just learned how to play all those annihilating jackhammer blasts himself (!) without fucking anything up in the process? Granted, there are no real intricate fills, decimating snare rolls or complicated tom tribal rythms to be found here, but that was not the goal of the compositions on this album anyway. The blasting is just exactly what the recipe needs and it works wonderfully tight, rich, actually varied (god damn!) and produced by an attentive auditory dandy that didn't want the listener to miss any of the delicious details. Even the bass drums have a pleasing clean click to them without resorting to artificicial catalogue brutality or sterile stomp cosmetics. Yummy! This drumming rocks so fucking hard, it's masterfully effective and as a professional antithesis actually the exact opposite of the extra shitty drum insult (one boring, miserably produced and kinda slow nonstop blasting style for the whole fucking album until you cry) that those uninspired and therefore infuriating people from Severed Savior pushed on me with that green cover artwork album that was so dumb and boring and horrible that I actually forgot its name in all its glory and I'm not gonna look that shit up because FUCK YOU! How come they had one trained man solely responsible for the kit with no other responsibilities in sight and the freak from Ancient Necropsy and many miles away did everything so much better on the side and on the fly although he was NOT THE INTENTIONED DRUMMER in the first place? I know it's kinda unfair to slam a completely unrelated band in a review about another just because their blast beats sucked exceptional tittyfuck asshole ass, but sometimes true talent reveals the mediocrity and laziness in everyone else. THAT'S how good this record is. You start to visciously hate all the things that are not like it.

The same compliment in regards to recording quality can be uttered about the crystal clear delivery of the guitars. Ivancient left a tiny portion of the rebellious mud on the strings but otherwise it's a very audible and edible experience from start to finish. Still brutal death metal by the way, just very articulate and positively clean while maintaining a cool crunch and a powerful riffing grip.This man just cared about his silly little brutal death metal record and he surpassed most of the worthless competition without knowing it. Fuck.

Statistically, it had to happen some day: From the seemingly never ending low quality well that is pumping out one torturous mediocre south american brutal death metal band after another (like Italy does it with its Rhapsody clones, it's like every region of the world has to choose a specific metal genre that it will almost choke to death with bad copies of a once great idea) came the debut of Ancient Necropsy and it offered truly memorable (!), engaging (!!) and lasting (!!!) music without sacrificing any strengths of its mother genre. One can't give enough "atta boy"s for that because brutal death metal is not one beast that is easy to tame without losing its balls. But Sir Ivancient did it, ladies and gentlemen! The balls are intact and swinging with pure joy! I play this shit as much as my old Manowar records because it is that much of a timeless classic.

In the good old fashion of missing the argumentative point and upsetting the reader, I will heap enormous praise upon the back of Ancient Necropsy's awesome riff massacre of a debut ("Bow to your king, you shits!"-Robert Baratheon) by shit talking another album that set out to do the same thing but failed somewhere miserably in the process. "Melodic brutal death metal" never was and never will be a real thing because dissonant pig rape tremolo vomit and well behaved Iron Maiden licks atop some metal core alibi chunk slams seem to bite each other in the genre ass whenever they meet. My main problem with one of the catchiest and most melodic brutal death metal albums of all time was always the lack of real substance. "Colossal Titan Strife" by Kronos was like a very beautiful woman that still started to bore and annoy you with her irrelevant gossip about that bitch Sheila from the beauty parlor at the second date. In the end, that almost famous album by Kronos wasn't too catchy and not too face smashing, just somewhere in between and relying way too much on it's rather cheap "God of War -The video game for virgins!" machismo atmosphere for my taste. The marvelous dude behind the name Ancient Necropsy did everything right on his debut and I will try to tell you why.

The riffing of Ancient Necropsy is most certainly held accountable by the genre's oppressive traits and doesn't shy away from ugly, nihilistic tremolo volleys, fat slam sections and old school open death chord festives. But there is still something else going on here, something so clever that you might miss it on the first listen: The intellectual pretentiousness of complicated melodic death metal and the accessible, cool arena rock hammerings of wild thrash metal are present in spirit if not in style on this album. That is one strange thing indeed, because this album is still pure nihilistic and ugly brutal death metal to the bone, but with some remarkable charming crowd work qualities that are found in the aforementioned sequences of melodic death or thrash metal. But I am not done with my bullshit, hear me out on this one: The first album of Ancient Necropsy is actually just a pure fucking heavy metal album from the eighties at heart. You can just smell it. The childlike grandiosity, the wide eyed fascination for the music, the unrestrained longing to move things forward, the love for actually catchy melodies underneath a nice guitar spin kick to the face, the passion for nerdy ridiculousness, the spiritual weirdo loneliness, the untamed desire, the pathos and the drama. This is one of the best brutal death metal albums I have ever heard because it's too unique for brutal death metal and too much brutal death metal to be anything else. Fuck.

It's always seemed odd to me how Ancient Necropsy has in a lot of ways gained more attention than any of its brutal death metal brethren from the same nation. The Colombian scene is hardly an unknown one among brutal death fanatics, but Ancient Necropsy has really somehow gained attention above and beyond just aficionados of the style. Apart from perhaps Internal Suffering, I've never seen a higher number of completely inappropriate people as fans of a Colombian project's music. I guess it's for the best in the end, though, since Ancient Necropsy is rather sick, ill, and all the other superlatives you're familiar with. And honestly, looking at it more seriously, I can see why this project has received more attention than, say, Carnivore Diprosopus; of all the Colombian brutal death bands, Ancient Necropsy is likely the most accessible, and what makes it such goes a long way to defining and differentiating the band's unique style.

Ancient Necropsy definitely falls in line with the speedy, technical style of brutal death played by bands such as Mindly Rotten or Nihil Obstat, albeit (somewhat) better instrumentally timed than the former, and not quite as oppressive and chaotic as either. Instead, Ancient Necropsy relies less on the insane, overwhelming brutality of most Colombian brutal death bands in favor of a more measured delivery; hell, of all the bands in that scene, Ancient Necropsy is probably the closest to oldschool death metal in style. Hints of Tucker-era Morbid Angel and Malignancy substantially dot this record alongside more conventional brutal death points of reference- perhaps the most obvious and distinguishing influence, though, is that of early Cryptopsy, which comes out on the melodic riffs and lead guitar work which really makes this music so memorable. Tracks like "Fucking With an Unholy Witch From Hell" (god, those titles) are made substantially more interesting than they'd otherwise be due to Ivan's great understanding of how to compose stately, neoclassical melodies amidst the grinding chaos.

While, being the debut, this album is definitely the most unfocused Ancient Necropsy album, the formative elements of the style are firmly in place and it ends up being a satisfying listen. Typified by huge rivers of blast beats, fast, string-skipping riffs, and a wet, slurring vocal presence, Ancient Necropsy's music is speedy, technical, and extreme without being omnidirectional or difficult to follow like other bands from the same scene. Again, like other Colombians, a hint of slam is present on this disc, but such riffs are generally used as transitions or bridges rather than parts unto themselves- that role is left for the fast, intricate tremolo riffing to dominate. Perpetually dancing on a razor's edge between the dissonant and melodic, the tremolo riffing is the most defining characteristic of Ancient Necropsy's music, and it's impressive just how melodic Ivan can manage to get within the context of such brutal songs without ever losing momentum or focus.

While the instrumental ability is a bit rickety and the song structures are occasionally clumsy on this release, it's nonetheless an excellent album in the Colombian brutal death style that can be recommended to all death metallers with ease. Ivan's first volley may not be his strongest, but it's nothing to complain about; full of personality and elegance, Ancient Necropsy's first stands the test of time as a unique and powerful slab of extreme music.

This is without a doubt the best Colombian band to play death/grind. The riffs in this one are not quiet done yet, one feels. This first attempt by Ancient Necropsy is absolutely amazing and would get my highest approval if it would have been the only one. But praise be it is not, and as such it will not get the highest honors. Already we can hear the crazy guitar work of Ivan getting to the absolute intensity that it is going to reach through his next two albums. By the way, the fact that this is a one man operation is the craziest thing to my mind, because these riffs are complex, the drums are faster than almost everything out there today, and all of this is played by one man? The vocals are love ‘em or hate ‘em as always with Ivan. Very good effort, high lights include ‘Abducted by a Killer Martian’, ‘Mutilated by An Innocent Child’, and of course ‘Brutal Grindcore’.

This is some fucking fun brutal deathgrind from the bowels of Colombia...and it's only one guy, too! The sound is overall quite similar to Brodequin, with more groovy parts instead of a non-stop brutality assault. Some of the tracks harbor some nice blasts, but the snare (like Brodequin's) can get overwhelming at times. Most of the riffs are chunky and weigh a ton, but some are more melodic; especially the ones that poke out when the drums stop. A good example of this is about 1:45 of the title track, where a tiny little slide or something pops out and makes its unique contribution.

Fucking With An Unholy Witch is one of the cooler songs here. It starts with a groovy double bass part with some nice displays of string bending and the semi-melodic style that this project achievs. The vocals are also very brutal, reminding slightly of Cryptopsy at times. At about 1:19 there's a few little weird guitar moments and some cool little mini-solo wanky stuff that's quite cool.

Overall, buy this if you can find it (I've seen it on Golden Lake's distrib. site, goldenlakeprods.co.uk), or download it to give a listen beforehand. It's cool stuff.