Album Type : Full
Length
Date Released : 28/4/2014
Label : Century
Media
ABORTED
“The Necrotic Manifesto” (CD, LP)
01. Six Feet Of Foreplay (01:12)
02. The Extirpation Agenda
(03:11)
03. Necrotic Manifesto (02:45)
04. An Enumeration Of Cadavers
(03:31)
05. Your Entitlement Means
Nothing (01:44)
06. The Davidian Deceit (03:32)
07. Coffin Upon Coffin (03:25)
08. Chronicles Of Detruncation
(03:07)
09. Sade & Libertine Lunacy
(03:41)
10. Die Verzweiflung (02:28)
11. Excremental Veracity (02:38)
12. Purity Of Perversion (02:44)
13. Of Dead Skin & Decay
(03:08)
14. Cenobites (05:28)
Bio
:
In this world where there are
many ways to die… there are even more ways to kill! Sonic mass murderers ABORTED have
elaborately focused on this grim reality since their inception back in 1995 and
return to once again to underline this fact on their eighth studio album, The
Necrotic Manifesto. Founding member and
vocalist Sven "Svencho" de Caluwé reveals that conceptually “the album is our own take on the
sordid tales of the Necronomicon, the “book of the dead”, of acorpse drowned in a tepid sauce
made of gore and fun, covered with a good old 80’s slasher vibe.”
Delicious gory fun aside,
musically speaking, ABORTED have always meant dead serious-death metal
business. Delivering aural blows with maximum versatility, hard-hitting
brutality and dead-on delivery, ABORTED have successfully melted together the
sounds of Suffocation, Cannibal Corpse, Carcass, Entombed and many more while
retaining their own signature sound and visual identity.
Production on The Necrotic
Manifesto was once again handled by Jacob Hansen, who had already sharpened his skills on 2003’s
gore-classic Goremageddon and returned to the sonic helm on 2011’s Global Flatline. Visually, the
albums concept was congenially transformed by Par Olofsson, who has gained fame
by working with acts such as The Faceless, Exodus, Immolation, Pathology,
Immortal and many more. The Necrotic Manifesto continues in the tradition of
its predecessors, guaranteeing you maximum gore metal pleasure while taking you
on a romp through a mind riddled with murderous depravity.
The
Band :
Sven De Caluwe | Gurgloroth
Mendel Bij De Leij | Flesh Upon
The Razor Wire
Danny Tunker | Immaculate
Resection
JB van der Wal | Nocturnal Pulse
Ken Bedene | Hymen Blaster
Review
:
Make
no mistake about it; ‘The Necrotic Manifesto’, the 8th full
length album from Belgium’s Aborted, is a very good album. It’s a great album,
even. It rages at damn near all times, it’s precise, grinding and hateful. It’s
also exhausting at points. The thing that makes this album so impressive is the
same thing that also takes the first half of the album down a notch compared to
what it could have been. Prior to “Coffin upon Coffin”, ‘The Necrotic
Manifesto’ is so chock full of blasting and Gatling gun double kick that it
started to wear me out. Wisely, Aborted started to utilize a greater variety in
both tempos and riffing style before it got to be too much of a good thing.
The
album starts out with, as you might have guessed, a prolonged sample from a
Hellraiser movie. This one is from Hellraiser IV: Bloodline, which is kind of
underrated in my opinion. The album really kicks in with “The Extirpation
Agenda”, the opening seconds of which might be the most insane in Aborted’s
discography. It’s kind of like a death metal version of an orchestral sting, horror movies use to sonically put viewers on edge. Things “settle down” from
there into something better resembling their previous work and it’s clear that
this is going to Aborted at their best. Every instrument is played precisely
and the production does an excellent job of showcasing that precision without
sacrificing any heaviness in the process. Of course, sheer brutality and
technicality does not guarantee a great album. Without writing engaging songs,
all of that effort and technical prowess is a monumental waste. Thankfully,
there is plenty of both on display.
If
the first half of the album is largely about flexing their speed muscles, the
second half is about a healthier variety. “Coffin upon Coffin”, perhaps the
best song on the album, is up there with the best death metal songs of the
year. You can hear plenty of Carcass in the first forty seconds; going from a
slower opening at first to a thrashier but controlled tempo before finally
exploding with the kind of blasting fury more consistent with the rest of the
album. It’s an excellent example of everything that Aborted has learned to do
so well, and it’s an approach I wish they would employ a bit more often.
Another absolute highlight of “Coffin upon Coffin”, but also the album as a
whole, is the fantastic lead work. Perhaps I’ve simply not taken notice of this
on previous Aborted albums, but the solos performed throughout the album are as
good as you’ll find anywhere. Not only do they shred, but they’re also
brilliantly crafted from a melodic standpoint. I’d argue that in overall
quality, only Carcass’ work on ‘Surgical Steel’ can claim to be on equal
footing when it comes to soloing in recent death metal.
All
of this equates to a great album that could have been an excellent album with a
bit more variety tempo-wise, or at least a more even distribution of the
variety already present. There’s a lot to love with the massive production,
incredible lead work, and top-notch performances all around. For the sake of
comparison, I’ll add that this is not only a better album than ‘Global
Flatline’; it’s their best since ‘Goremageddon: The Saw and the Carnage
Done’.
Words by :
Daniel Jackson
