Horned Almighty, Necro Spirituals

I don’t know a whole lot about this band of heathen bastards except that they hail from Denmark and play a punk-infused brand of black metal much in the same vein as Impaled Nazarene. What I can tell you, though, is that I like an album that doesn’t stick around too long like a crazy ex-girlfriend or some of my relatives. It’s got to hit hard often and with enough of a variety that I won’t be bored and immediately toss it aside and move on to the next disc in this massive pile on my desk.

Horned Almighty‘s fifth full-length, Necro Spirituals, is just such an album. It’s not going to push any musical boundaries, but it is ideal for raging to with a few cans of beer or sweating over some heavy iron at the gym. The near 36 minutes on this album range from straight up black metal to punk-tinged outbursts to grinding blasts and back again all the while spitting vitriol and hatred for all things good (like fluffy bunnies or rainbows).

For the most part, the nine songs tear through your gut at a nice clip, galloping along with a variety of rhythms, careful to avoid becoming a mindless blast-fest. Horned Almighty utilizes some well timed tempo shifts throughout the album to keep things swelling and ebbing nicely — enough to keep you entertained through a very playable album that delivers the goods and never overstays it’s welcome.

Keep an eye out for the title track, “Age of Scorn,” “Blessing the World in Pestilence,” and “Blasphemous Burden” (I love the opening bass of this song) — these songs will beat in your skull with ferociously maniacal metal. The rest of the album is equally devastating in its own right, but those tracks really put a hurting on my neck.