Album Review: Neckbreakker - Within the Viscera
Reviewed by Dan Barnes
Beginning life as Nakkeknaekker in 2020, but changing to Neckbreakker earlier this year, this Danish death metal quintet – irredeemably young, it must be said – have already graced the staged of some Europe’s most prestigious Metal events, including Roskilde, Summer Breeze, Hellfest and Sweden Rocks, as well as here in the UK at Bloodstock Open Air.
A couple of demos and a single under their old identity has given way to a more productive 2024, seeing three single and this, Within the Viscera, their debut full-length. Taking cues from the Scandinavian old school by channelling their inner Entombed and Bloodbath, while reaching out across the pond for a little of the Florida sound of Morbid Angel, Neckbreakker have repurposed those legacies and filtered them thought a more modern aesthetic.
The last Nakkeknaekker single was also the first Neckbreakker release and forms the beginning of Within the Viscera. Horizon of Spikes tells you all you’ll need to know for a crash course in the young lads: theirs’ is a modern sound rooted in the old school, guitarists Johan Lundvig and Joakim Høholt Kaspersen offer a crisp clean tone to the oozing filthy riffs, while Christoffer Bach Kofoed’s vocals are barked frenzied of distain and madness.
Second single, Shackled to A Corpse, sees the rhythm section of Sebastian Rohden Knoblauch and drummer Anton Bregendorf laying down some grooves upon which the guitars weave a catchy, modern sound. It’s all quite refined really, a mid-paced track that isn’t looking to break the sound barrier but is able to ingratiate itself into your subconscious so that you’ll have the stomp running through your mind for days.
The third and, so far, final single is Within the Viscera’s concluding track, Face Splitting Madness, which starts and ends with mysterious atmospherics, delivering a thoroughly modern slice of extreme metal before the eerie outro brings the whole thing to a close.
Before that conclusion we have half-a-dozen tracks of Neckbreakker flexing their creative muscles, trying out a few differing styles to see which bests fits. Putrefied Body is led by the bass and a Tardy-like vocal; Nephilim takes itself out for a spin, opening up the engine with a whirlwind drum line and a fat breakdown. There’s even a cow bell in there somewhere – don’t say you weren’t warned – and Absorption walks the fine line between the old and the new, comfortably combining furious beats with fat chugs.
The young lads in Neckbreakker seem to have been looking even further back beyond the Stockholm and Florida sounds, to the Bay Area perhaps, as Purgatory Rites and SILO both display unmissable Thrashing moments amid the death metal frenzy. SILO, especially has an early Slayer thing going on.
My highlight of Within the Viscera is the album’s longest composition, Unholy Inquisition, which at a scootch under seven minutes is given plenty of time to develop and grown into a song of behemoth proportions. Comparatively slow, it still resounds with rapid-fire triplets, at odds with the steady drums, but not distracting from them. A huge beatdown and the groove-centric outro shows a band with ideas aplenty and a fearlessness to use them at their will.
Unlikely to knock the death metal scene off its axis, Within the Viscera is, however, an extremely competent start to a career that promises much.
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