Let me start with a warning; If you haven't heard of NECROPHAGIA before today, you'd better skip this review. This is by no means a proper album for a first date. This really is one for the connoisseurs of very bad taste. As for me, I'm not exactly known for my love of Extreme Metal, but there are times after listening to other stuff that you need your fix of very brutal and unforgiving bands like WURDULAK, SUPERJOINT RITUAL and in this case NECROPHAGIA. I have always been able to enjoy the chaos, mayhem and destruction that those band brought to my brain, cleansing it from a lot of too proper thoughts.

You need to know that they were one of the first Extreme Metal bands in the 1980’s. NECROPHAGIA got together in 1983 and it took four years before they released their absolutely brilliant and groundbreaking debut album “Season Of The Dead” in 1987. Until the untimely demise of band leader Killjoy in 2018 the band was able to bring us seven albums in total. Now, some six years later, there is another album out, called “Moribundis Grim”. It is a kind of compilation album with a lot of different aspects thrown in.

The musical style of Extreme Metal the band always made was Death Metal with a lot of Thrash Metal, Horror and Movie references. That is still the case on “Moribundis Grim”. You will find a live track (“The Wicked”), two rerecorded songs (“Mental Decay” and “Bleeding Torment”), two covers (“House By The Cemetery” and “Halloween 3”) and two new songs (“Scarecrows” and “Moribundis Grim”). The band was working on latter two when Killjoy passed away. The sound quality varies from very good to rather poor, but still adequate to be put on this album.

As for the vast amount of players mentioned in ther lineup, you will find that not everything is recorded with the latest lineup in place, some of it was with former members of the band, so they need to be put n the list of perpetrators as well. Everybody here deserves to be called out on their parts, and I guess they all will be happy to have been a part of history in the making. To me NECROPHAGIA was one of the forerunners of the Extreme Metal scene, and even with my limited knowledge of that part of the Metal community, I do know that the band of whom Killjoy was the undisputed leader made a huge impact in the underground. “Moribundis Grim” is a fitting end to a massive legacy, and one for the real fans.