Necrocene |Scumocracy |Personal Records

Necrocene is a death metal band from Italy. Its five members came up through the country's underground punk and metal circuits. The name turns the geological idea of a human age into an age of death, a jab at capitalism and the wreckage it leaves behind as it marches on with nobody at the wheel. Their first release, the 2024 EP "Detrimental Paratomy", picked up good words in the underground. The lineup is Apo on vocals, Alex and Joy on guitars, Dan on bass and Ste on drums.

"Scumocracy" comes out on CD through Personal Records. It has ten tracks in just over half an hour, with its boots sunk in the Tampa swamp around 1990. The mix could have left Morrisound yesterday. The guitars have a rusted edge, a fat bass rumbles under every riff, and the drums are played by a human with no grid behind him, speeding up and dragging as each song asks. Apo growls from the gut in the old Obituary way.

The band swerves from gallop to crawl without warning, as in "Tempestarii" and the title track, which sinks into a downtempo slow enough to rot on. "Scale Of Grey" is two minutes of blunt speed. "Human Lithification" and "Concrete Petrichor" turn social decay, obsolete tech and capitalism as a death machine into riffs that grind like cities turning to stone. The blueprint belongs to Obituary, Death and Cancer and is followed to the letter, with a punk bluntness that strips the arrangements to the bone. The running order swings between speed and sludge, and by the time "The Lust Of Us" rolls over you, the half hour has gone down in one swallow.

|7.5