Swollen with a long-considered hourlong opus of a sixth full-length album and now bloating in preparation for release Los Angeles-area neoclassical extreme thrash metal quartet Exmortus are going for a soft reboot in the post-isolation era. With ‘Necrophony‘ the neo-thrashers shrug off their long-standing Robert E. Howard obsessed heroics in favor of dark literati fantasy lore, changing the mood and the scope of reference for their two-decade proven modus to a far more charming thrash-dance. At once more sophisticated in movement and all the more accessible this time around the band’ve managed to sidestep the burnout felt beyond their entirely consistent output since 2014, taking on a healthy bout of change this time around.

Founded in Whitter, California circa 2002 Exmortus have never fit squarely into one headspace or scene having been a somewhat melodic modern thrash (we called it “rethrash” at the time) metal band that’d sparked up interest when taking on the technical thrash metal uptick at its hottest point in the late 2000’s/early 2010’s. Defined by their Robert E. Howard meets Yngwie sort of aesthetic while picking and choosing from specific taste in melodic black/death metal which specifically fit their neoclassical shred infused touch the band’s approach to classical music inspired extreme thrash metal was less ‘The Music of Eric Zahn‘ and moreso relevant to what Skeletonwitch and Hexen were doing at the time. This rings less loudly as we touch upon their first LP (‘In Hatred’s Flame‘, 2008) or two for Earache Records where shredding leads and heavy/power metal braced melodicism were an important part of what they were doing to some degree but still formative releases in terms of personal style. The prime genetic material found on the band’s earlier records still drove the locus of the project by way of guitarist/vocalist Jadran “Conan” Gonzalez for their first five albums but most profoundly changed with their third LP (‘Slave to the Sword‘, 2014) as a key point of refinement and on-boarding for new fans who were attracted to a more equitable hybridization of thrash, power, shred and some implication of melodic death metal. To this day I would say that third record was their most important but their fifth (‘The Sound of Steel‘, 2018) completed the thought with some notable refinements made.

Exmortus‘d basically made the same album three times in a row, which I suppose is both a good thing and a bad thing depending on how much you’d felt that core idea called for refinement. They’d gotten there with it and seemed to be pressing on with that same idea before the pandemic hit, forcing ’em to tap the pause button a few years ago and take some time to reflect upon the path forward. Heading into album number six I figure even the band was ready for something at least tangentially different and it makes sense that the band’ve proposed ‘Necrophony‘ as a “fresh take” on what Exmortus set out to do in the first place. No, they’ve not ducked out from under the world of neo-thrashing neoclassical aggression, in fact most of the album feels entirely familiar in voice as it swerves from lead driven trade-offs (a la prime Megadeth) before tucking into (superficially speaking) Dissection-esque dances with darkness here and there and continues with the harsher spectrum of vocals found on ‘The Sound of Steel‘. We find bigger shifts when taking stock of compositional reach, use of lingering motif, and a pointed shift in lyrical themes towards popular horror and fantasy references, there is even a song (the opus “Darkest of Knights”) written in glorious evocation of Bloodborne (2015).

‘Necrophony‘ generates theme by way of subtle use of motif with the core ostinato pulling from two key sources (vignettes “Masquerade”, “Overture”) which brace the voice of the album in a decidedly non-repetitious but consistently phrased format. The band’d essentially written late-album opus “Children of the Night” (inspired by Bram Stoker‘s Dracula, 1992) first and having found the standard desired built the cadence of the ~54 minute record around its feeling. This wouldn’t have guaranteed the sensation of a considered whole if the general voice of Exmortus hadn’t become slightly more pliable in the interim, leaning away from the stiffer shouldered hike of thrash metal enough to feed into the swinging and shredding side of the band even more. That is to say that this isn’t an indulgent album, especially as we hit upon the longest pieces on the album (“Darkest of Knights”, “Children of the Night”) as they present their feature-packed density compared to the quicker shredders (“Oathbreaker”, “Storm of Strings”. “Beyond the Grave”) that surround ’em.

While I do miss the trad metal pump and Conan-browed side of the band the ~4 minute extreme thrash-adjacent pieces on this quite long but palatable record tended to win me over within its greater war for attrition. The cadence and subject matter of “Mask of Red Death” does have a bit of umpteenth-gen removed ‘The Somberlain‘ to its movement and it seems like Gonzalez still has some taste for solid enough thrash metal riffs, even if things go a bit Sega Genesis shred here and there on later songs, such as “Prophecy” which’d also stood out to me sandwiched in between two of the best pieces on the record. The best pieces here still bear that rethrash-era hiccup to their crunchier riff-guided sound but also hold down a Mercyful Fate-juiced extreme thrash sort of stomp to their movement. There very well may be too many pieces that are indulgent showcases where these guys aim to shred their brains out but eh, when you’ve allowed yourself to get knee-deep in the album it makes sense that Exmortus end up pouring it on even thicker.

If these songs’d not managed any sort of tuneful edge, or, entertaining station-to-station buzz there’d be no major reason to recommend ‘Necrophony‘ but if you’ve waltzed into this album an expert level nerd like me expecting something a little bit different but with all of the major components of Exmortus‘ sound intact then the sheer indulgences of a 50+ minute record should feel like a sopping wonderland to cheese out on. I’d simply had a good time with it, since we are quite far from the more pure thrash metal strictures I tend to enjoy. As a whimsical but highly proficient diversion which is highly approachable with bit of video game shred-level charm in hand I’d say Gonzalez‘ vision has never been easier to grasp. A moderately high reocmmendation.

---