[Cover photo credit to Léonor Ananké]
Now entering their fifteenth year as a band, France’s Necrowretch are readying the release of Swords Of Dajjal, their fifth album three years in the making. Initially the sole work of multi-instrumentalist Vlad, the band was originally associated with the “old school death metal revival” of the early 2010’s. They continued experimenting along those lines with 2015’s With Serpents Scourge, their first record for Season Of Mist, 2017’s Satanic Slavery. However, at that point, Vlad explored this direction as far as he could, and that changes were on the horizon.
He says:
On Satanic Slavery we on purpose took things as far as we could as our goal was to deliver the most bestial album possible. But once we achieved that goal, I knew we had to take a slightly different if still as uncompromised direction.
That’s when Wenceslas Carrieu from Cadaveric Fumes entered the picture, first joining a live session on bass. But when Kev Desecrator amicably parted way with the band to focus on Destroyer 666, he switched to six-strings and proved to be a valuable songwriting partner.
Vlad explains:
He immediately came up with lots of ideas and thanks to him, we now have a whole new dynamic: a bit like Sepultura had back in the days in between Max Cavalera and Andreas Kisser, with me focusing now on my vocals and playing rhythm guitars while Wenceslas takes care of all the solos, the starting riffs and the off-the-map bits.
When their fourth album, and first with Wencelas, The Ones From Hell was only one month old, COVID hit, cancelling tours, and they instantly started working on new songs together. The result is Swords Of Dajjal.
The whole record was written on purpose mostly on acoustic twelve-string guitars and as a three-piece, with their new drummer Nicolas Ferrero, who has been playing on and off live with them since 2018.
The result is, according to Vlad:
…Our most black metal record, with splashes of death metal here and there. Whereas on the previous album all tempos were pushed to the extreme, there’s far more variety here to be found. It also gave us free reins to reach a more mystical, Biblical if you will vibe. We choose to focus on the Dajjal character, basically the antichrist in the Muslim religion. The Koran says that he’ll appear as a false prophet only to bring doom to this world, with an army of demons coming from the east.
