Album review: NECKBREAKKER – Within The Viscera

Never judge a book by its cover. Fresh-faced and spry, Silkeborg youngsters NECKBREAKKER have the look of lithe hardcore kids, more likely to spinkick you in the pit than get mixed up in the beefy, grizzled, neck-expanding world of old-school death metal. The tasteful, monochrome, faintly pretentious artwork for this long-awaited first LP, too, feels far more understated than you’d expect from a genre that revels in revulsion. True to its title, though, Within The Viscera is a slice of serrated European nastiness easily capable of mixing it with the heavyweight current American crop.

Originally known as ‘Nakkeknaekker’ in their native Danish, the shift to a more anglicised band-name is indicative of a broader tightening of focus, and the need to crack vertebrae not just in the home scene but all over the world stage. From the rampant, riff-laden opening to Horizon Of Spikes, to asphyxiating early highlight Putrefied Body Fluid, and the skin-crawling Shackled To A Corpse, every one of these nine tracks has the momentous bludgeon to match. The hammer-smashed influence of Floridian legends Cannibal Corpse and Obituary is writ large, but its how they subtly integrate the grind of old European masters Entombed, Dismember and Carcass that generates real buzzsaw spark.

Spectacularly, they seem incapable of dialling it down. There’s no descent into skull thudding, Cookie Monster monotony, and where they press the boundaries of the genre it’s into the even-more-excoriating worlds of grindcore and powerviolence rather than anything melodic. Instead, it’s down to the fathomless grooves of songs like Purgatory Rites and Unholy Inquisition to provide any kind of conventional ‘listenability’. And by the time listeners spill into the psychotic, slaughterhouse atmospherics of legitimately unsettling closer Face-Splitting Madness they’ll know that a new extreme metal force has begun their bloodstained rise. Absolutely sick.

Verdict: 4/5

For fans of: Cannibal Corpse, Obituary, Entombed

Within The Viscera is out now via Nuclear Blast