Necroven - Worship of Humiliation

NECROVEN - Worship of Humiliation (MEMENTO MORI - CD 2012)

I often like to write about bands, which I feel have been slightly underrated or forgotten and whose albums I am big fan of. Here is such band, definitely one of the best Spanish death metal projects of recent years in my opinion – Necroven. It was started back in 2011 as a one-man project – which is something quite unordinary on the death metal scene. After two demos JR recorded his first album “Worship of Humiliation” and it is a splendid stuff. If you think that often such one-man projects are uninteresting and the music is poor, you will change your mind after hearing this album. 

It really is a killer effort, I think. Necroven is soaked in the old school gore, JR takes full grasps of influence from the Finnish and Swedish death metal, spices it up with a bit of American brutality and doom / death morbidity... and the result is fuckin excellent, top stuff for my musical taste. The best thing for me personally is how much sometimes this album reminds me the old recordings from Amorphis – which to this day are the best Finnish death metal ever recorded (I mean their debut LP). Necroven has similar obscure and dark sound, same brutality combined with some melodic parts... doomy pieces can be mixed up with more ferocious and brutal stuff and this is exactly why songs such as “Tormented till Death” and the title track sound so amazing. It's like Incantation was jamming with Amorphis and invited also guys from Drawn and Quartered, Funebre and even Bolt Thrower. Can it sound any better? Nope. The riffs are great, the sound too – the music has that proper powerful brutal kick, which is obligatory for death metal. And at the same time Necroven has no problem with creating dark, morbid atmosphere – so, it’s all there. Each song has some hooky parts, riffs which will stick in your head and tear your flesh apart. Each is splendid. 

Oh, one more thing. On the album you will find also a cover of Unconsecrated “Exhumating Profaned Flesh”. For me it is quite odd choice, as this is relatively young and little known band, not one of those classic 80’s or 90’s bands. But the song is great, the cover is well played too, so no complain... it is just weird that someone decided to cover such younger, small and little-known band instead of the classic shit. David Garcia had to proud when he heard it. 

I have no idea what else can I write. “Worship of Humiliation” is a great album, yes. It deserves to be on vinyl. More so, I am huge fan of Necroven second album and the 7”EP as well. It's a shame that the band feels to be so forgotten and underrated. And it is a shame that there’s been silence in Necroven for something like six years now, I have no idea even if the project is still active or not. I do hope that JR will come back with another dose of such killer death metal! 

Verdict: 85/100