Necro Deathmort – The Colonial Script

Imperial, the opener to Necro Deathmort's third longplayer, seeks to bewilder and confuse with an array of scattered laptop beats before giving way to the blackened assault of slow-motion guitar chugs of Led to the Water. A few tracks later, though, and it's apparent that the riffing here isn't particularly thick or sludgy, especially when stacked up against the crushing aesthetics of peers like Electric Wizard and Ufomammut. Cookson and Rozeik's utilisation of tinny, computerised drum sounds also tends to deflate their project's supposed heaviness.

 

What they do have is a knack for weaving together textures which assemble to produce a dense, mesmeric atmosphere. The duo would probably feel comfortable soundtracking sci-fi B-movies: check the disquietingly dark ambience of Wretched Hag, which thrums and throbs forebodingly before colliding with the harsh caterwaul of album highlight Arrows. To see them hit similar peaks elsewhere would have been preferable to the hazy ambiguity which holds the record back in its second half. [Ross Watson]