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The Black Planet

NECANDI HOMINES – Black Hole (EP)

Sérgio Pelado 04/02/2019 Comments Off on NECANDI HOMINES – Black Hole (EP)

Necandi Homines is an Italian outfit hailing from Iesi, a town skimming the coast of the Adriatic Sea. They play a mix of slow-paced doom metal, old-school black metal and experimental/avant-garde music. Black Hole is the third release from the band in their eleven years of history, but comes just a bit over a year after their debut album, “Da’at”.

“Necandi homines” is Latin for “killing humans”, which relates to the band’s misanthropic themes that pervade their lyrics. Drawing inspiration from the fact that all of us, in the long term, are doomed, Necandi Homines tries to find transcendence and absolution “in the coldness and darkness of the greatest void”. This concept was explored in “Da’at” through an atmospheric, very sensorial journey. Their debut album leans heavily on the band’s experimental side. That might come as a bliss for the fans of ethereal heavy sound, but also risk to become monotonous, slipping into background music. Fortunately, Necandi Homines shifts the focus to more concrete compositions in “Black Hole”, while keeping the experimental edge.

The three tracks from the EP come as untitled, labelled with dots which mark their running order in the release. The first track is the journey down the “black hole” towards the void: it begins as a clean-vocal chant sailing over the waves of a tremolo-picked guitar, post-rock style. After a few loops, the psalm devolves into distortion, and the chanting turns into shrieking. By the end of the song, despair has choked the last remains of light from the voice, which vomits forth his “fall into the abyss” in deep, guttural growls. The second track represents the epitome of fear and denial, as the blast beats pummel through the song’s middle section, on top of a very simple, but extremely effective tremolo guitar loop, reminiscent of Mayhem’s Freezing Moon. The third and final track is the one which resembles the most Necandi Homines’ work in “Da’at”: a brooding, thirteen-minute long tribal composition, with shrieks and growls echoing all around. As opposed to a full-length record which, from start to finish, sounds like this, the song becomes all the more effective for being a more concise experiment.

“Black Hole” is a much-welcomed change in Necandi Homines’ paradigm, which have crafted this obsidian jewel where doom metal, black metal and dark ambient are summoned and bind together to take us down the existential angst path. Simultaneously, every genre has a chance to stand out and shine, thanks to the dark talent that lurks behind each instrument.

7/10

About Necandi Homines

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Review by Sérgio Pelado
Managing Editor: Elsa Marques

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About The Author

Book nerd from Portugal, who also happens to have an interest towards music, mainly in its heavier spectrum. May your metal be heavy, your coffee strong and your monday short!

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