Asphyx: Bound to the Rack
If you’re looking for European death metal that doesn’t come from the Scandinavian peninsula, ASPHYX are the OGs. While death metal was still in its infancy, the Dutch outfit – and, of course, AUTOPSY across the pond – were already expanding the boundaries of the genre creating a doomy, death metal hybrid with their early demos, and more importantly, their game-changing debut The Rack. Fast-forward 30 years, plenty line-up changes, a break up, a reunion and a discography as consistently strong as they come, 2021 sees the fourpiece come full circle, finally securing stability in the line-up and releasing their strongest record since their debut via the esteemed Century Media Records – Necroceros.
“ASPHYX turned into a band of brothers, we’re a brotherhood. Everywhere we go, we have a shitload of fun whether it’s waiting to check in at the airport, or long rides to a show, we laugh everywhere we go. It’s like being out with the lads.” Muses legendary vocalist Martin van Drunen on the newfound stability of ASPHYX. “That atmosphere is something we brought with us when we recorded Necroceros. The best example I can give of the chemistry in the band at the moment, we were jamming to finish the final arrangements. I can’t remember what song it was exactly, but Paul [Baayens, guitars] just needed one last thing to finish the song, but couldn’t figure it out. We started jamming from the beginning and all of a sudden Paul had this grin on his face, looking to the others and they all just knew what he was going to do. It all comes down to the chemistry, everyone just knows what the other was going to do. For me – because I don’t play an instrument, my job comes after so I was listening and watching them – it was fantastic to watch how tight this formation is, how special it is.”
That sense of chemistry seeps all the way through Necroceros – at every turn, every riff, ASPHYX sound like a band that are, above all, having fun. And to back up the good-time brutality of the Dutch musical onslaught, van Drunen has upped his writing game considerably with the lyrics right the way across the record. Keeping with his personal style of lyricism, much of Necroceros tackles the subjects of warfare and history, ranging from the exploits of the Templar Order in the Holy Land to the elite, special forces currently active in warzones across the planet to this day. But the real gems of van Drunen‘s historical tales come from the areas less often covered in metal lyricism.
“Blazing Oceans is from the point of view of the crew of an oil tanker that’s getting torpedoed by a submarine. Nowadays, everyone seems to glorify submarines but if you really think about, it’s a coward’s attack. Everyone seems to have forgotten that over 20,000 sailors died in World War Two just trying to bring goods to the UK and break the German naval blockade. I wanted to write from their perspective, take a different approach and honour these men.” van Drunen explains, before moving onto his biggest lyrical departure: Mao’s Great Leap Forward. “I really changed everything on Three Years of Famine. When I was reading on World War Two, I got onto the Pacific, but especially Japan and China. Mao Zedong came into power in China after World War Two, and it was fascinating reading about his horrible policies. He let 45 million people die. I wanted to get a little bit deeper and Paul came in with the fantastic music. There’s nothing to do with war, it’s not a made up story, this is real modern history of a famine on the scale mankind has never experienced.”
Historical storytelling may make up the vast majority of van Drunen‘s lyricism across Necroceros, but it doesn’t dominate the entirety of the record. In between tales of the Battle of Kursk (Molten Black Earth), the Templar Knights (Knights Templar Stand) and the unstoppable power of Genghis Khan (Yield or Die), van Drunen also delves into fiction, creating tales of cosmic horror, a planet devouring entity taking focus in Necroceros‘s title track, while Mount Skull sees an ode to the father of cosmic horror, Lovecraft himself.
“It’s a bit of a dedication to the first polar expeditions and to Lovecraft’s At The Mountains of Madness. But instead of entering the mountains of madness and seeing the mythology of the elder race, the explorers find shelter in a cave in a mountain shaped like a skull during a blizzard, but there is something lurking there. One man does survive and make it back to the main base, but decades later he is found frozen with the log book still in his hands. The end of the story is them reading the log book, but Mount Skull is never found again.”
With lockdowns hitting countries the world over harder than ever amid the ongoing, raging COVID pandemic, the importance of escapism cannot be overstated. The world is a bleak place, especially when you’re being forced to spend every day inside your own bubble – for many, being able to escape into fantastical worlds, be it via books, video games, or extreme metal lyricism, is proving to be a lifeline more than ever. And the importance of storytelling in metal is not lost on van Drunen.
“As a kid, when I bought records the first thing I hoped for was a lyric sheet. A lot of people completely underestimate, for example, VENOM. At War With Satan is a 20 minute story, you cannot top that blasphemy. IRON MAIDEN did the same thing, fantastic stories about history and war like Aces High, The Trooper, Die With Your Boots On. Or To Tame A Land, that introduced me to Dune, those lyrics inspired me to go into the library and read the book. [Storytelling in lyrics] is so important to me.”
ASPHYX may be celebrating the 30th birthday of their debut album this year, but the energy and dynamism in the band is stronger than ever. And with a return to normality seeming ever-distant in the UK, that energy may prove to be the perfect escape. Forget about COVID, forget about furlough, let ASPHYX tell you tales of war, of glory, of the clash of steel and cosmic horror, of genocide and, of all things, self-destructing cosmetic surgery. Behold the charge of the Necroceros.
Necroceros is out now via Century Media Records.
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