Horned Almighty is a Black Metal act that is quickly starting to pick up steam in the metal world. The material the band plays is often heavy and furious, played with an angered atmosphere that earlier acts in this style captured nicely without focusing solely on being melancholic or in some way dramatic. And, for their fourth full-length effort, Necro Spirituals, the band has done the same thing and brings that same fiery fury to yet another crushing release.
While the band stems from earlier Black Metal acts like Darkthrone, there is no denying that the band is willing to step things up a little more in an attempt to distance themselves somewhat. Traces of Thrash-inspired acts and early first-wave of Black Metal acts like Venom can be found throughout this recording, such as on the blistering "Fountain of a Thousand Plagues" and "The Age of Scorn", both easily appealing, and somewhat similar to recent Goatwhore recordings, but definitely come off more intense, angry, and often faster in the long run, weaving a very dominating environment for the album. These tracks are aided nicely by the more modern production quality, which really picks up on the heavier, deeper bass that, while mostly playing along with the guitars, really adds an extra element to the mix in an effort to make the release come off as heavy as possible, and it works fantastically against the deeper vocals and often intense, fast paced drumming.
This isn't the only approach to the recording, however. In fact, this album offers a great variety to the band's sound, going from that high speed angry alcoholic fueled-like Thrashy speed and intensity, down to a slower, colder sounding style that borders on a grim sound, but still comes off as being aimed more towards that early sound without a clear purpose of being melancholic. Tracks like these really make the band shine, and show that they aren't a group who just hammers away at the listener, but can create songs just as crushing as the speedier tracks, but at times even make them into more epic-sounding Black Metal tracks that have a hint of hooks in them. Granted, while the album doesn't really seem to push towards a specific dark and cold atmosphere, there is no denying that the track "In Jubilation and Disgust", one of the many slower paced tracks here, does seem to focus around creating a very dark atmosphere that many cold Black Metal acts would typically weave into their recordings.
The closing of the album actually finds the band taking things into a much slower pace. The track "The Blasphemous Burden" seems as if the band has completely dropped the established sounds on the album, as well as a good amount of solid Black Metal songwriting for the most part, and replacing it with a pretty strong Sludge atmosphere mixed with Black Metal and even Doom ideas at the start of the song due to it's pace and overly simple chords. This actually continues into "Absolved in the Sight of God", actually showing a strong similarity in the song structures such as the direction the songs go in, as just the composition and build up from the start of the songs until the end. While these are interesting at first, they honestly are not as strong as the rest of the album, and considering how similar they are structurally with the changing of pace within the tracks themselves, once you hear "The Blasphemous Burden", chances are good you won't want to sit through "Absolved in the Sight of God" more then once. Had these been spaced out better in the release and not just side by side, then perhaps they both would have stood a decent chance, but to have them back-to-back kind of kills it thanks to some obvious structural repetition.
In the end, Necro Spirituals is a fantastic piece of Black Metal that offers up enough variety to keep the listener attentive through just about everything. Granted the last two tracks are not the greatest, but the rest of the album is well executed tracks of pure anger and rage coupled with both obviously intentional, and unintenational dark, cold, and once in a while melancholic slower paced Black Metal that incorporates some hooks into a crushing environment. Horned Almighty have what it takes to break out into the Black Metal spotlight, and Necro Spirituals proves it beyond a shadow of a doubt.
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