Nekroí Theoí Take No Prisoners On Wonderfully Devastating Debut Brutal Death Metal LP

Florida’s brutal death metal band Nekroí Theoí are absolutely wild in the best way. On their debut full-length album Dead Gods — available everywhere May 31 via Prosthetic Records — they thrash through a horrifying underbrush of awe-inspiring terror, emerging with one of the most violently potent works of sonic mayhem imaginable. They obey no lines set to box them in, not even the ones broadly outlining brutal death metal itself, instead incorporating absolutely epic flourishes like their emotionally crushing ten-minute closing track, also called “Dead Gods,” which features atmospherics and clean vocals that pretty much seamlessly merge into the rest of the sprawling work. There’s nothing “cookie cutter” in sight here, and Nekroí Theoí hold absolutely nothing back.

Dead Gods feels very strongly like it is designed to convey the experience of the terror encapsulated in its notes so that listeners can not just “learn” from it but take some kind of dark control and get immersed in the commotion. In other words, the point isn’t just to spiral the instrumentation out of control, although that’s fun too — rather, they’re busting open a dam and going after what lies behind it. The band feel very interested in flipping the script, so to speak, and leaving themselves and listeners in the driver’s seat to the point of parading some hallmarks of the violent side of religion and modern society in a brutal exposé which ultimately proves much more deeply moving than hateful fingerpointing just because there’s already plenty of that to go around. We need tangible confrontations with what’s in front of us — and Nekroí Theoí deliver big time with their inescapably physical, utterly moving Dead Gods.

Through poetic and poignant lyrics questioning one’s own role in the mayhem to the carefully constructed, just absolutely massive and sprawling music, Dead Gods treats its subject matter and overall offering with the robust seriousness it deserves. The band have gone so far off the edge that they’ve reached a sort of enlightenment in the misery, and their new album feels like death metal (as an idea, not a “genre”) presented the way it’s “supposed” to be: uncomfortable, painful, and kicking you towards a confrontation and intermingling with deeply set forces of tangible darkness.

5/5 Stars

Check out a sample via Bandcamp