Necrophagist - Epitaph (2004)

 

Animosity by association

I never looked down on allegedly "wanky" music, as my dad played guitar virtuosos such as Yngwie Malmsteen or Steve Vai in his car when I was young. That wasn't all he played, but shredders were a consistent part of my dad's catalogue, and so that sound was normal to me. It wasn't until later that I learned this type of music was (and still is) considered uncool. The musicians and their fans are even accused of being inauthentic, as if one needs an ulterior motive to make and/or (pretend to?) enjoy it. Of course, any remotely non-mainstream taste can be met with suspicion, but there's something about the ease of engaging with clean production, guitar spectacle and lack of any off-key notes or chords (which would give the impression of skillessness to a myopic listener) that lays virtuoso guitar music bare for judgment, fully transparent. "Non-technical" death metal can still be difficult to play, but if it obscures itself beneath a combination of grimy production, subtle or unintuitive melodies, and generally restrained fretwork, it would flow like an amorphous mass rather than scream for the listeners' attention. Polished guitar spectacle just seems "obvious" in comparison.

Then we have Necrophagist with its unholy mix of bright-timbred shredding, metronomic blastbeats and guttural growls. Any metalhead who can set their subjective preference aside for a moment will at least begrudgingly respect the band for its sheer importance, as it almost single-handedly spawned a whole new metal style, which some dismiss as self-indulgent guitar nerd music, or more bluntly, as masturbation. Since the term "technical death metal" can refer to several subgenres, some adjacent to brutal death metal, others more progressive or melodic, I'll call the branch associated with Necrophagist "neo-tech death" for distinction. This neo-tech death is still dense in raw number of notes, but doesn't push into sonic extremity the way Origin or Beneath the Massacre did in the 2000's, and it's in fact a relatively accessible style whose tonality and rhythm are closer to progressive thrash or melodeath (which itself leans heavily towards thrash) than traditional death metal. Riffs are about distinct individual notes, often grounded with a consistent pedal tone. Tunings don't go very low (although there is traditional death metal in standard, lower ones quickly became the norm), and the guitars avoid full-on chromaticism in favor of minor keys. The "death" parts are superficial traits such as speed and harsh vocals, which aren't remotely unique to death metal, nor do they describe anything concrete. Genre names catch on semi-randomly and lag behind actual developments in music, so you end up in a situation where one term describes two or more marginally related subcultures. A lot of the disdain for neo-tech death comes from the fact that outdated or imprecise language causes very different genres to be confused for one another - you probably don't want to be assumed a fan of something you hate.

Although I adore Necrophagist, I don't think highly of most music influenced by them. Not for the perceived self-indulgence, but for the habitual, less deliberate, and often surprisingly conventional songwriting. Necrophagist discovered a mix of death metal and neoclassical that appeals more to general metalheads than deathmetallers specifically, which is how the band carved its own niche years after death metal genres had supposedly solidified. "Epitaph" presents an abstract musical language in a very accessible way, with many tropes familiar to fans of lighter metal genres, though I won't say that familiarity extends to non-metalheads. Under the obsessive guitarwork with meticulously placed harmonics and string bends is a syncopated, yet melodic, approach to riffs, solos and phrasing variations, wrapped in a familiar structure. You may not enjoy Necrophagist's melodic sensibilities, but their presence in the long, elaborate solos is undeniable. Fast staccato riffage and metronomic blastbeats give way to slow-burn sections with kick fills and a vague swing, eventually culminating into solos which often have distinct slow and fast halves. The pedal tone riff has an inherent momentum and an implied tonal center to guide a less seasoned listener, as opposed to the ambiguous atonality of old death metal. Transitional song sections often feature Death-like phrasing of single high notes or power chords preceding a flurry of swift strums that quickly build up tension. Without going deeper, the songs on "Epitaph" have a mostly standard metal structure with a predictable solo placement, which is a solid base for introducing someone to a new genre.

Even in the transparency of the mix and predictable solo placement, there is depth and freedom to songwriting without breaking adherence to the base structure. There are variations of themes in key, rhythm, tempo and number of repetitions, while the main riff often cycles with a variation of itself. Riffs shortly before the start of a solo often reappear right after it. "Stabwound" introduces all its themes in condensed form in the first 45 seconds, including the starting and ending sections of its solo (when those solo segments reappear, the rest of the solo is inserted between them) before it expands on them, almost like an intro within the intro - it sets the framework for the rest of the song, while the song in its entirety sets the framework for the album. Only "Stabwound" has this structure, which shows to me it's a conscious decision considering its placement as an opening track. I'm not saying this album is incredibly complex, because it isn't. However, the variation in composition proves intentionality beyond a vibes-based "whatever sounds right" approach. Necrophagist is benign in terms of speed or production layers compared to later neo-tech death, but I find other more praised bands trade attention to structure for immediately obvious gimmicks, like Obscura's goofy vocoder or Archspire's cartoonish speed.

The clarity of a bright and warm production creates a unique serene quality that's incredibly rare in music with this much instrumental density. The production on "Onset of Putrefaction", while that album is instrumentally similar, is too harsh to achieve the same effect. There are somber, nostalgic, tense, and celebratory passages, but they all come with great emotional restraint, which I find fascinating. The solos aren't bombastic, and I never get the impression that I'm expected to feel a certain way, but the somber archaic tone is persistent all throughout, almost like Necrophagist comes from a different era when unsubdued emotion was considered vulgar. The emotional distance and open-endedness are the reason this transparently mixed music still has mystique to it, and I attribute that ambiguity to the structure of the common fast pedal tone riffs. Normally, the low notes and a steady beat provide a forward momentum, while the top notes carry the melody. Here, however, the tempos are so fast the melody comes out in short bursts, while the whole riff takes on a rapidly looping clockwork quality - a great example starts from the 1:34 mark on "Ignominious & Pale" with the swift oscillation between two strings that achieves a cyclical feel before the riff itself has looped. It's not the separation between these melodic fragments but their short duration that makes them sound disconnected, almost like an unfinished thought, interrupted over and over again. When I listen to "Epitaph", I like to imagine a band of self-powered ancient automatons still playing music to this day. We get glimpses of the culture they were built in, but nothing definitive, like the short fragments of melody. Maybe they have malfunctioned after all this time, so they struggle to produce complete musical ideas, or maybe the aesthetic sensibilities of their time are too different for us to understand.

I'm aware of the band's blind spots. Transitions between tempos can be quite abrupt, as heard on "Symbiotic in Theory", and the short scale runs as riff extensions or introductions to solos are likely filler. Staccato riffs are contrasted with longer-sustained notes in the solos, but I won't be surprised if that's an unintentional aesthetic mismatch - the solos are generic compared to the riffs and much less emblematic of the band's style despite the fact the compositions are structured around them. There is also a contrast between the low growling vocal and the bright mix, but the former doesn't serve a percussive role. Instead, the vocals start and stop at individual syllables unrelated to the rhythm. Just the presence of harsh vocals is probably a leftover formality from older extreme metal. The same way thrash beats with a thin, bassless snare sound like a formality from older times, because they fail to add intensity and aren't fast enough to fill a texture role like a blastbeat does (where the individual hits start to blend together). That same beat feels like bludgeoning someone to death in old hardcore-influenced death metal (and other hardcore-influenced music), because the low frequencies there aren't limited to the kick and bass guitar, which causes metaphorical infighting between the instruments. Several elements on "Epitaph" are tropes taken out of the original context that made them work. I find most neo-tech death bands are also eager to use the same tropes without the context.

If you have a negative opinion on this neo-tech death subgenre and wonder why it sounds "toothless", know that a lot of its core musical traits were born from death metal's confrontational ethos - one of creating purposefully ugly art. When the superficial abrasive elements are present, but the original motivation behind them isn't, the music becomes uncanny. Imagine listening to Archspire: the overstimulating wall of sound might give you a headache with its saturated timbres alone, but if you listen past the production, the melodic backbone is weirdly mellow, and the compositions never dare to subvert your expectations. The disconnect happens because old familiar sounds become means to a very different end, which itself signals different values in the musicians. Despite some gross lyrics, Necrophagist isn't a confrontational band, as it doesn't try to challenge the listener's ideas of what music should be, and the production is light ("conventional") enough to not reach that uncanny state where it pulls in the opposite direction. Both Necrophagist albums are detached and ponderous records, almost like they explore the aesthetics of emotion more than try to express it, not concerned with reception. I don't see this as a negative, because I don't engage with art with the intention to feel something (which doesn't mean I never feel anything), but to understand it and its significance in society. Inspecting my own emotional reaction or lack thereof, or other people's stated reaction, is one way to do that. What I've understood doing this is that the average music fan demands to be served by the musicians, and wouldn't think to meet them in the middle. I've also understood that I enjoy it when artists simply don't care what the audience wants, yes, including me.