Necrophagia

Super-old-schoolers Necrophagia have history, as they can lay some serious claim to being first-generation death metal and gore fiends. But due to a way patchy history of inconsistency, Jungle Rot albums garner more interest than Necrophagia releases. Which is half of a shame: these guys know how to do mid-tempo death metal gallops ("Suffering Comes in Sixes"), Obituary-style Floridian death groove ("Kyra") and fast punk-death romps ("Beast with Feral Claws"), all with a nice sense of humour, as song titles like "Deathtrip 69/Death Valley 69" and "Trick R' Treat (The Last Halloween)," itself a cool little audio rest stop on this album's highway to hell, prove. But damned if that lifeless, click-y, separated production doesn't keep things cold and distant (I'm somehow reminded of when Overkill awkwardly covered the Subhumans) and some of the death chugs sound too similar (Obituary were mentioned for a reason). You get to a point where one too many death chugs equals second-rate Pantera and suddenly Necrophagia just end up sounding like the local almost extreme bar band opening up for Dry Kill Logic, despite their gore-death pedigree. Weird, very weird.