Graveland — Necromanteion
The material here comes from between early 1991 & 1992, and it only really hints at the projects later sound. The reissue sees the project offering up a very off-kilter yet grimly rewarding mixture of: drum machine warped doom, slowed death metal, sluggish industrial chug, hints of black metal, wavering synth textures, and an often quite radom selection of lo-fi fantasy movie soundtrack effects/ chants- all of which is offten rode over by a deep guttural mumbling vocals.
The disc offers up a total of 14 tracks in all, and these vary from: slow & repetitive death metal/ doom metal power cord drum machine lined chugs. Onto amateurish, but oddly charming & often sluggish industrial synth marches. Over to mid paced metallic blacked metal chugs that are lined with thunder & horror effects, and of course the ever present & locked drum machine rhythms. Over to galloping yet wavering war metal stomps that are ribbed with very lo-fi ethic percussion textures, battle soundtrack elements and synth throbs. Through to late 70’s to early 80’s horror synth soundtrack like dirges, that are layered haphazardly with horror effects & guttural mumbles
The sound picture through-out all 14 tracks is often quite wonkily layered, and darkly dense- but like a creepy yet cheap horror movie there’s lots to enjoy & revel in the grim yet slightly cheesy sonics on offer here. All told this is a rewardingly wonky & haphazard trip into metal grimness…this is certainly not for those who like their metal polished, technical & serious, but if you enjoy off-kilter & damaged mettlic's with a darkened yet lo-fi quirky charm this is most certainly for you!