Necrophobic - Death Metal

The ultimate sonic wallpaper of boredom, Necrophobic epitomises mediocre, generic and formulaic death metal more than any other band. Basically, the death metal equivalent of Dark Funeral. Not surprisingly, they share a member in guitarist David Parland. Pseudo-sinister riffs that are hard-pressed to be called even average, shouting vocals that sound bored and uninterested, and a drummer that has great difficulty to maintain an otherwise relatively mild and inoffensive tempo. If I were to sum this band up in a sentence, I'd call it intentional de-evolution of the death metal genre.

Every album by Necrophobic sounds the same, and quite boring. The most the guitars do is tremolo picking mixed with a chord sweeped up and down to make it sound 'brutal'. Of course, there aren't many actual riffs on their albums as most of the guitar work is chugging in the form of mindless chugs and deathcore-style breakdowns with about as much thought put into them as a person puts into breathing while asleep. Very often - and by that I mean on every single track of every single album - Necrophobic will revert to harmonic minor tremolo leads to give their music an 'occult' vibe. Yes, the very same harmonic minor scale you've heard everywhere from Black Sabbath, to Tim Burton movies, to synth goth, to video game soundtracks, in fact the entire Necrophobic discography sounds like second-rate indie video game background music. It's the go to scale for the bored, the lazy and/or the incompetent, because it's easy to create a cheap, formulaic, elevator music 'spooky' effect. A further bastardisation of death metal's eloquent use of chromaticism, and a musical regression towards the constraints and confines of pop. Necrophobic has more in common with The Nightmare Before Christmas' soundtrack's composers than with Phantom or Incantation.

Avoid this band, replace with actual death metal such as Incantation's Onward to Golgotha.