Asphyx Announces New Album Necroceros
January 20, 2021 is going to be an interesting day, because either Joe Biden will be sworn-in as president and half the country will lose its mind, or Donald Trump will be re-sworn-in as president and the other half of the country will lose its mind (while Kayleigh McEnany insists that it was the most well-attended event in human history, no doubt).
Assuming we’re all still alive two days later, on January 22, Asphyx will release their tenth full-length studio album, Necroceros. It was recorded at Tom Meier’s Tom Meier Studio and at Paul Baayens’ The Mörserstudio, then it was mixed and mastered by Sebastian “Seeb” Levermann at Greenman Studios.
And just what the heck does the title mean, anyway? Is it a dead rhinoceros? That would be pretty cool, but no, that’s not what it means. Explains Asphyx frontman Martin van Drunen in novella-length statement:
“The first recordings for Necroceros started somewhere in November 2019. Mainly just rough ideas. We hired Tom’s studio for a couple of jam-sessions so we could record as soon as we thought something had potential. We finished about 6/7 songs, but after a few listenings we decided there had still quite some work to be done.
“After the 3 previous albums and this one being Asphyx’s 10th official full studio record we were very well aware that the standard had to be incredibly high. Our advantage was that for the first time we had a steady line-up. Since Incoming Death we were damned good “worked in” together, one “felt” what the other wanted or where he was music-wise going. With Paul having tons of riffs on the shelves, the earlier takes and the unexpected rapidly spreading Covid-19 outbreak and thus all our gigs being canceled one after the other, we booked Tom once more for a bunch of jam-recordings. Which turned out marvelously…
“It took 2 weekends to finally arrange all songs and tape the drum-tracks. Going completely berserk while playing and being totally satisfied with the variety, rawness, brutality and dynamics of each particular track, we were 100% certain that we were heading in the right direction.
“Long before all the above was happening, I already had introduced Necroceros as a working title. It came out spontaneously, sounded powerful and since we used the word ‘Death’ in every release-title, so did ‘Necro.’The idea was a sci-fi fantasy entity on an eternal course, existing only to devour planets, turning universes into meaningless voids. And while the boys were laying guitars and bass over the drums I searched and wrote the themes and lyrics for every single track. And there we were…
“To mix with Seeb was a shot in the dark, but he had told me one of his wishes was to ever be able to mix a Death Metal album for a band like Asphyx. And since we wanted a fresh input, we gave him a chance by letting Seeb do a test and it fused simply excellent.As always, we passed the working title on to Axel Hermann to skizz about and let him throw his morbid imagination over it with detailed bits and pieces. And once more he didn’t let us down with another brilliant masterpiece.
“And here we are. Something old, something new, something krushing, something sparkling, something alcoholic, something genius, but all very, very Asphyx!”
The first single and video from Necroceros will be released in less than two weeks, on Friday, November 6. That’s when Century Media will start taking pre-orders, too. While we wait for that, feast your eyes on the cover art by Axel Hermann:
