Necronautical – Slain In The Spirit | Album Review

Ditching the corpse paint, cranking up the death metal riffs and delving deep in to the psychological processes around death, Necronautical return to claim more lost souls with Slain In The Spirit.

The ambitious and grandiose, brutal assault on the senses sound provided by Necronautical has been carved out over the last decade, earning the band significant respect from the UK underground. Technically brilliant yet still retaining a savage aggression, the band’s latest endeavour is easily their best to date. Slain In The Spirit is an iron fist under a velvet glove, with its hulking, sinister strength could knock you into next week and write a fully orchestrated funeral percussion for your funeral. This also ushers in a new era for the band, as they ditch the signature black metal corpse paint and bring in some more death metal elements to their music. Slain In The Spirit ushers in a new, exciting and epic era of the band.

Slain In The Spirit in the briefest possible descriptive terms is the lovechild of Emperor’s sizeable symphonic black metal sausage and the aggressive blackened death metal of Behemoth. That being said, there is also a lot more to the album that, with progressive passages on ‘Hypnagogia’  reminiscent of Opeth’s seminal album Blackwater Park, alongside a plethora of other influences, Necronautical have not only built on 2019s Apotheosis, they’ve taken it to the next level and beyond. From the opening track, ‘Ritual Recursion’, to the very last ‘Disciple’ you are met with epic symphonic passages and a cacophony of melodic chaos. The layers of texture and nuance range from sweeping and vast to the downright primal and sinister, both are pulled off with exquisite technical efficiency and brilliance. The album conjures up vivid imagery of dark, eerie places where magic in all its forms is allowed to run riot in its most esoteric, visceral and primal form. 

The album draws inspiration from cults, spirituality, the altered states of consciousness, and people being so overwhelmed by the holy spirit they speak in tongues. Of course this being a black/death metal album this is pondered upon from a darker perspective but whether it is through ritual magic or drugs and deprivation, the album explores the many forms of mysticism. ‘Necropsychonautics’ the most intriguing conceptually, looking to death having a psychedelic effect on the brain, which in turn asks the eternal question as to whether this is where people gain their perception of the afterlife from the hallucinations caused by death. By utilising the onslaught of death metal with the atmospheric focus of black metal Necronautical have captured something quite unique in its approach to heavy philosophical topics as well as musically. With some areas bringing out a twisted form of psychedelia.

The album branches out significantly from the sound that the band had originally established, evolving in the best possible way to create an album that is beastly yet mystical. True to its subject matter you are thrust into a trance-like state as the album’s rhythms and melodies cascade around you like a black waterfall eventually swirling down into a whirlpool to another reality. The sheer audacity to create something is so elegantly grandiose yet so brutally crushing will set Slain In The Spirit set Necronautical apart from their contemporaries as they have broken the often monochrome nature of black metal with an illustrious explosion of almost psychedelic shades of grey, blurring the boundaries between black, death and progressive metal to create one truly special album. 

This album will no doubt catch many off guard, but with a truly inspired and captivating performance Necronautical are at the beginning of an upward trajectory, which alongside the likes of The Infernal Sea and Ethereal, will see the new generation of UK black metal thrive.