BravePicks 2021 - ASPHYX's Necroceros #30
December 1, 2021, 3 years ago
As the world continues to battle a virus, we present the ultimate escape! It is time to celebrate our BravePicks 2021! Heavy metal is the ultimate diversion, so let's let the music do the talking. It is time to unveil our annual BravePicks countdown, where the devout scribes at BraveWords cast their votes at the hits and misses of the year! So who will be our #1? You’ll find out as we count down the BravePick Of 2021 each day in December!
Everybody has an opinion and it’s time for ours! And stay tuned in January for the writers’ individual Top 20s (new studio albums ONLY), Top 5 Brave Embarrassments (a fan favorite!), What/Who Needs To Stop In 2022? and Metal Predictions For 2022. All will be showcased come the New Year!
First up, the best of the best for 2021 begins NOW!
BravePicks 2021
30) ASPHYX - Necroceros (Century Media)
Our countdown opens up with some good ol’ fashioned doomy death metal. Dutch icons Asphyx have plundered and toiled the wastelands for over 30 years now and new opus and 10th full-length Necroceros is a spell of mammoth riffs that recaptures the spirit of debut The Rack. The title track and “Three Years A Famine” drown in that murky crawl, while “The Sole Cure Is Death” and “Botox Implosion”.
Asphyx frontman Martin van Drunen on Necroceros: “The first recordings for Necroceros started somewhere in November 2019. Mainly just rough ideas. We hired Tom’s [Meier, engineer] studio for a couple of jam-sessions so we could record as soon as we thought something had potential. We finished about 6/7 songs, but after a few listening’s we decided there had still quite some work to be done.
"After the 3 previous albums and this one being Asphyx’s 10th official full studio record we were very well aware that the standard had to be incredibly high. Our advantage was that for the first time we had a steady line-up. Since Incoming Death we were damned good ‘worked in’ together, one ‘felt’ what the other wanted or where he was music-wise going. With Paul [Baayens, guitarist] having tons of riffs on the shelves, the earlier takes and the unexpected rapidly spreading Covid-19 outbreak and thus all our gigs being canceled one after the other, we booked Tom once more for a bunch of jam-recordings. Which turned out marvellously...
"It took 2 weekends to finally arrange all songs and tape the drum-tracks. Going completely berserk while playing and being totally satisfied with the variety, rawness, brutality and dynamics of each particular track, we were 100% certain that we were heading in the right direction.”
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30) ASPHYX - Necroceros (Century Media)
