Aug 082022
 

On the last day of 2021 the Minnesota-based extreme metal band Nekrotisk celebrated New Year’s Eve by releasing its debut EP, Apraxia I: Mors Certa. It was the solo work of Mehrunz Oel (aka Matt McGee), a six-track rendering of blackened death metal that impressively interweaves dire and hellish moods, searing and soaring riffage, jolting grooves, maniacally obliterating percussion, and crazed vocal tirades that are a fitting match for the frequent fretwork frenzies.

Mehrunz shouldered almost all the work that led to that EP, including recording, mixing, and mastering it and creating the cover art (with a guest appearance on the second track by James Benson of Amiensus and Chrome Waves). But his ambitions were greater than creating a studio project, and so in the coming months he assembled a talented live line-up and organized a first tour in June that took the band across the Northwest of the U.S., through Montana, Idaho, Washington, and back through North Dakota on the way home.

What we have for you today is a video that recaps that tour, set to the music of a riveting track from Apraxia I named “Sulfur and Ash“.


photo by John Malley

Based on the video, this was a fun tour, one that took the band through some beautiful (and daunting) landscapes and some interesting-looking businesses in between laying waste to venues scattered among those four states. Nekrotisk‘s video also generously includes footage of performances by some of the bands with whom they shared those now-obliterated stages.

Of course, the video will also introduce more people to their fire-breathing music. “Sulfur and Ash” is a high-speed torrent of battering drums, raking and boiling riffage, eerily whirling leads, and a cacophony of snarling, screaming, and gasping vocals.

There’s some viciously jabbing fretwork and savage start-stop jolts in the first part of the song, and the administration of a severe beating later on, but it earns its name, because it’s also sulfurous, flying into superheated and brazen discharges of delirious ferocity that seem bent on burning everything to ash.

To stitch together a few more alliterative adjectives, this attack is rough, raw, and rabid, and it gets hearts racing:

Apraxia I: Mors Certa is available on CD at Bandcamp, and you can also pick it up as a “name your price” download. We’ve included a full stream below, and it’s worth your attention because it reveals other dimensions of Nekrotisk‘s stylistic collage besides incendiary madness.

BANDCAMP:
https://nekrotisk.bandcamp.com/album/apraxia-i-mors-certa

SPOTIFY:
https://open.spotify.com/artist/1JyuYqpXJ8bfubehyloRJA

SOCIAL MEDIA:
https://www.facebook.com/Nekrotisk
https://www.instagram.com/nekrotisk/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

 Leave a Reply

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

(required)

(required)

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.