Nice work, this, from Sweden’s Necrovation who, like Ignivomous, Encoffination, Undergang, and the like, find a pleasurable seam of pungent mulch upon which to slurp right in the ribcage of the long-decayed cadaver of classic death metal. This self-titled album, thought, doesn’t utilise quite so harsh a tonal palette as the abovementioned bands, instead making intelligent use of curious lead guitar ideas and an abstract, meandering compositional style to toss the listener hither and thither (like the violent sea on the album cover) rather than encase their ears in a relentless stream of rough concrete ejaculate.

Key death metal reference points collide: there is often an obvious likeness to early Scandinavian bands- Dismember or Entombed - in the dense rumble of tracks like New Depths. But, these influences slosh together with the swampish grit of Autopsy, equally as interested in slow, dirty, ponderous riffing. A third element lies in the fevered lead guitar emanations that pervade much of Necrovation. Trey Azagthoth might be invoked at a number of points: sometimes earthy grooves provide the basis for some “Van Halen-gone-bad” flamboyancy hinting at classic death metal lead moments like Where the Slime Live. Other times, the lead guitars provide strange reverberating effects as punctuation to thudding slow numbers like Pulse of Towering Madness.

The main point here is that the sound is a shifting and fluid one- I used the word ‘meandering’ above, which might be appropriate if in an uncharitable mood. It has a perplexing feel which is difficult to pin down, similar to Execration in songcraft. It hooks into vicious grooves, but only in a transitory manner, moving on to new ideas as soon as the first can be computed- closer III Mouth Madness (The Many), for example, is quite hard to get a proper feel for as a listener. There is a definite oddness here- a crunching instrumental (The Transition) or dark sludge allusions (Resurrectionist) contribute to throwing you off balance. At times, this really feels like a fantastic record, crushing but sophisticated, though it’s also a complex one that demands some effort from the audience.