Necrotherion – Live Misanthropy
Necrotherion
Live Misanthropy
Released August 2013
Black Metal
Self Released
Being a band that is focused on creating raw black metal, Ohio’s Necrotherion clearly portrays this with the release of their live album, Live Misanthropy. The seven songs range from fast paced, Emperor/Darkthrone sounding songs to more drone based songs that sound like it was made by older Mayhem. Melodic and beautiful black riffs paired with vocals filled with agony and raw emotion make this band sound like they would’ve fit in the early black metal scene in Norway. While it seems like black metal has become less about the music and more about the trends, Necrotherion looks beyond those trends. You can tell that their only purpose is create music that is hard hitting and shocking while sticking to traditional black metal roots. Also, live albums can be boring to listen to because you’re not there to actually experience what the band sounds like, but with this album, I felt like I was there headbanging along to every song.
The first couple of songs on the album, Whispering Trees and Nihilistic Faith, didn’t draw me in right away. While I loved the build up intro for Whispering Trees, the rest of the song felt a bit jumbled with what seemed like this huge wall of noise coming at me at a millions miles a minute. I feel like they could have opened with a different song, specifically Novus Ordo Seclum. That song was my absolute favorite out of any song on this album just because of how melodic the intro riff was and how the entire song reminded me of another black metal band, Cirith Gorgor. While black metal isn’t my favorite metal sub-genre, sometimes black metal bands come up with these beautifully heavy riffs that just makes me love it so much.
Along with changing the opening song, the only other criticism I could even think of is the quality of the sounds on the album. I could sit here and nit pick about how Live Misanthropy didn’t have a great quality to it because it’s a live album, but that’s usually how live albums sound anyway. Of course there could have been screw up while playing the songs, but there was really nothing I heard that made me want to immediately stop listening to the album.
I highly recommend this album to anyone who is a huge fan of black metal, more so raw sounding black metal verses the over produced, hipster black metal bands that seem to be popping out of nowhere lately. Live Misanthropy was one of the best live metal albums I’ve personally ever listened to just because it did what a lot of other live albums didn’t do, and that was creating a show where I felt like a part of the crowd even though I was sitting at a computer. You could feel the stage prescience and passion from when vocalist Stellarvore spoke in between songs saying powerful but yet brutal messages such as “you have one life to live, don’t f***ing waste it!” Necrotherion are truly underrated and I honestly hope they put out a full length album in the future.
4.5/5
Lauren Gowdy
Valkyrian Music 
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