First impressions can go a long way and the début from French rockers The Necromancers would take them around the globe. Servants Of The Salem Girl starts with flare and an effervescence that stays throughout the album. While delivering a strong hit of heavy rock. With an emphasis on foot tapping rhythms. It’s groovy in the sense that it all fits together neatly and damn is it tidy.
The quartet are from Poitiers, France and like most things French play with style. Moving on from the great progenitors of metal with a sound that’s reminiscent but not derivative of Clutch. The Necromancers have got their own sound. Pulling inspiration from fantastic stories, lore and religious interpretation that’s reflected in the music with sweeping licks, blasphemous choruses and powerful hooks. For a début album to be this verbose requires a law of passion.
As intense as it is refined Servants Of The Salem Girl takes no time at all to get from wistful to wicked. While there are riffs that clearly pay homage to the classics The Necromancers pull it off without sounding tongue in cheek. The love for their influences is so well defined that you can only just hear it amongst the cacophony of interesting drum patterns and ripping solos. It’s a metal in the streets and hard rock in the sheets kind of situation they’ve got going here.
The harmonies these guys work are just nasty. Demanding a head nod in agreement to their malevolent creation (and recreation.) Yet it’s not just the parallel frequencies that form this. The timings, the drum patterns, are so well suited to the riffs that Servants Of The Salem Girl not only excels in power play but in defining what makes, not just a good album but an absolute killer.
Even with so much going on it’s impressive how it maintains such a taught cohesion and it not only does that but sustains it for six tracks over forty-minutes. With never a dull moment.
9/10
