Naming your band after one of the most chilling and mortifying symptoms (the blackening of skin and tissue) of one of the vilest diseases (the Bubonic Plague) in human history brings certain assumptions about. First, there is the assumption that the band plays some variant of extreme metal, which Acral Necrosis does. It would also be reasonable to assume that they are going to be brutal and keep the tempos high. They succeed with the latter, but for various reasons, don’t really deliver in the area of brutality. But whatever your band’s name is, you should expect some quality songs, even from such an inexperienced group. Simply and clearly enough, this is the area where the band struggles the most.

Acral Necrosis plays a version of blackened thrash metal that’s better when it’s black, rather than when it’s thrashing. While Unsanctified by Blastthrashing Maelstrom and Servants to a Blackened Sun leave room for improvement, they are much better than the two displays of mediocre thrash found on the EP. Servants To A Blackened Sun is the better of the two, for it sounds like a long lost Darkthrone track. The riffs are fast, depressing, and it features a throat-shredding performance by vocalist / guitarist Al that is simply unmatched on the EP. It’s a real shame, because he ends up sounding like an average black metal vocalist gone slightly hoarse on the other three songs, especially in the opening title track. Riff-wise, nothing really comes out and grabs the listener, at least in a positive way. The one riff that did catch my attention was the verse of The Beast, which sounds like an almost exact copy of Slayer’s Black Magic. Actually, make that the first verse of Black Magic, just add in an annoying whammy bar-dependent solo. Not even two minutes long, the song dies before it is given a chance to grow, and ends on an extremely awkward note, with Al letting out a falsetto shriek that was most likely put in for humorous reasons, but just ends up sounding bad instead of funny. This and the title track are the thrashier of the four songs, and are simply not as good as the two blacker songs.

If this was a full length, and followed the same pattern that this LP does, I would give this a score in the 50-60 range. One thing I can say with confidence is that this band seems to favor and play black metal better than thrash metal. The thin production of this EP also contributes to the overall sound, making the lean towards black metal that much more logical. Cultivating their sound with the seeds of Darkthrone and early Slayer, they aren’t shining in the originality department very much, but they are young. With time they might be able to rise above the obscurity of the extreme metal underground and produce a much stronger mature effort. Until then, Servants to a Blackened Sun is the only thing I will be coming back to this EP for, but even then, I will have to be in the mood for it.

Note: Below is a live clip of "The Beast". In time the video may become outdated.