Review by Carl on September 24, 2023.

What we have here is a compilation of early material by the influential proto death/black metal band Necrophagia. They played in the same league with other numbskulls such as Slaughter (CAN), NME, Messiah and early Bathory (to namecheck a few), and had a good part in helping spawn that vile abomination called extreme metal. Are we glad they did? Fuck yeah, we are!!

Going into this with the knowledge that these are early recordings from an act that isn't really known for subtle nuance or accessability, you simply know that this is gonna be pretty harsh stuff. Stuff that's well-suited to alienate those acquaintances you don't really like or to break up your stiff neighbors' garden party that you weren't invited to. It's rough sounding (though not unlistenable), brash, filth-encrusted and chaotic, and guaranteed to send anyone into more polished styles of music into a stupor, and that's how we like our early death/thrash/black metal!

You could compare Killjoy and his band of merry men to acts such as the ones already mentioned, but bands like "Deathcrush" era Mayhem, Black Shepherd, Minotaur and the old stuff by Voivod, Sodom and Sepultura, are pretty good reference points as well. The guitar riffing and battering percussion are simple, raw and to the point, providing a more than fitting backdrop for the vomitous vocals of Killjoy, sputtering and blubbering forth all kinds of splatter inspired tales of rot. The music is played primarily at fast velocity, but there is room for some slower sections and shredding guitar lead work too. The whole package is brought with a copious dose of hardcore punk-fueled energy, and it does not fail to drive home the point. That point being the one at the end of a nine inch nail about to be driven through your cranium.

The sound quality is, as stated earlier, on the raw and underground side of things. At times it can get kinda chaotic, and the instruments do overpower each other here and there, but this is simply the kind of stuff that flourishes under these conditions. Slick production values would neuter this kind of music, and we both know that if you're reading this, you don't care all that much about pretty and polished music anyway, right?

This is a cool compilation of early stuff of a great band. It's a sweet snapshot of an exciting and special time in underground extremity, and this stuff deserves all the love it gets as far as I'm concerned.

Rating: 8.5 out of 10