Artist: Necrotize
Title: Grievance
Type: Album
Label: Dissected Records

West Midlands natives Necrotize have been around for a few years; in fact I am the proud owner of their earlier self-released material, so now we come to the first proper album release. It is good to see all new tracks, and not re-hashes of previous efforts, but then again, this line up is slightly different to that from the past. Their PR material claims that they bridge the gap between straight metal, thrash, and death metal. I am very much in agreement with these factors; there is a hunger for UK death metal of old, mixing the thrash the way Machine Head and Fear Factory do of late, a similar mechanism to their chugs and gloves off arrangements, and not forgetting of course the drums emulating Bolt Thrower with a constant bombardment of kick drum activity. That’s not to say that it is a rip off, but there are many elements to their sounds present, pinch harmonics and all. ‘King’, ‘Messiah’ and ‘Wretched Life’ all live and breathe, a bit of groove and lots of heavy, yeah, you better believe its heavy. I defy any metal fan who cannot get their head bobbing to ‘Hordes of God’, to me a tribute to the current crop of heavy as hell German thrash.

‘Grievance’ is a remarkable improvement to their muddy earlier material; I tend to like that underground edge more. The sound has been cleaned up perhaps that little too much, but that is progress, what you have here is a band aiming at the wider market and it works remarkably well in all fairness. The arrangements remain interesting and thorough. Necrotize do offer something special, each time you listen to this album you pick out new traits and sounds, especially if you flip between sound listening devices each time. This area of the UK brought us this thing called heavy metal, Necrotize emulate the hard working down to earth approach associated with many bands from this geographical location, they are fine musicians and a promising hope for the future.

http://www.myspace.com/necrotize1