Band:	Necrovation
Album:	Necrovation
Style:	Death metal
Release date:	June 2012

01. Necrovorus Insurrection
02. Dark Lead Dead
03. Pulse of Towering Madness
04. Commander of Remains
05. New Depths
06. Sepulchreal
07. Resurrectionist
08. The Transition
09. III Mouth Madness (The Many)

Necrovation have been stomping around since 2004 and released their debut four years later. For a debut, it was a solid disc. But it was also a pretty standard sort of deal for Swedish death-worshipping, old-school-style stuff. This thing is different. Yeah, it still has a clearly audible old-school, Swedish-style core, but it's more than just that. With their debut you could bang your head contentedly, but could always tell that, more than likely, any handful of "revivalist" DM bands could have made the thing.

Not so with this. Now we can say for sure that we know what Necrovation sounds like. And, by whatever stupid Swedish God from Thor you prefer, it sounds good. Like if the ghost of Sepultura past jammed up an album with Joel Grind (vox-wise, mostly), a blood-covered Volvo semi, Morbid Angel's ABC's and a cauldron of crude oil-based flesh-eating slime.

Could say that they've stripped their style down--the wall of sound quality has been Febreezed out a bit--but that would be understating the amount of layering and texturing and other sorts of fondly-used music review jargoning you can insert here. It's thick, dirty, substantial, nuanced stuff. "Layered" death metal can mean "fatty" death metal. Not here. It's juicy, yet rotten riff on juicy, yet rotten riff with evil-sounding melodic coats and little or no fat to be found. Even the instrumental track with it's short orchestral bit is get-the-fuck-to-business excellent. As is the entire album.