Newcomers, Necrogore are from Italy (who already have bands like Horrid and Eroded playing this style), and they play a pretty killer style of the genre. This is the band’s debut, but they have some singles and splits, as well as an appearance on the Dismember tribute album Dreaming in Red from 2024 (their song was “The God That Never Was”).

Once a genre that got me super excited immediately, not much over the last year or so has really grabbed my attention – even the 2025 releases from stalwarts Entrails, Lik, and Carnal Savagery barely registered with me. The last few bands that really impressed me were Come, Sweet Death, and Gravestone from 2023. But a couple of Spring/summer efforts here in 2026 might pull me back in; of course, there is the new Fleshcrawl, Xorcist’s Aberrations, and this gnarly debut.

With the moniker of Necrogore and song titles like “Leeches on My Dick” and “Forced to Eat Shit”, you’d be forgiven for thinking this power trio would be a porno/goregrind band, but they pull fully from the holy trifecta of Dismember, Entombed (the opening intro is a clear nod to “Left Hand Path”), and Grave.

The chainsaw guitar tone is spot on, as the band essentially states they created their own version of the HM-2 pedal, and the songs all deliver an excellent mix of the big three above. From the galloping, hacks ‘n’ slashes of “Forced to Eat Shit” and “Leeches on My Dick”, the punky blasts and gallops of “Offered to the Dead” and “Mediumistic Intercession”, the Grave-ish stomps of the instrumental title track, and “One Foot in the Grave” and even the more lumbering doomy, six+ minute “Sulphureal Morbid Corpse”.

The album ends with a fierce Swedish death metal reworking of  Jerry Lambert’s The Texas Chainsaw Theme, and only die-hard horror score fans will even recognize it.

A solid, promising debut from a young band paying homage to the elder gods, but still putting a bit of their own personality into things.

The album consists of the band’s split, ep, and demo material recorded prior to their 2020 debut Fall into Dementia, all rerecorded and rearranged, plus a new song and a cover of Pestilence’s “Suspended Animation” (one of my very favorite Pestilence songs FWIW). And regardless of the age of the songs (2013-2016?) they all deliver a blistering, catchy take on American Death metal.

I get foul notes of Deicide and Monstrosity’s full-on thrashier take on death metal. But there is a lot of other stuff at last as well.  A dash of the European scene (Asphyx, Sinister) and for a really obscure reference, I hear some of The Netherlands’  I.N.R.I’s debut album Hyper Bastard Breed, in the faster, relentless songs.  Then just add the innate South American intensity and razor-sharp guitars of say, Krisiun, and you get an incredibly satisfying buffet of styles.

And those intercontinental influences come together to form a very, very enjoyable death metal record that I have been giving a lot of air time to. The styles are melded seamlessly into a furious but also controlled 50 minutes. The production leans more into the cleaner Morrisosund of yore, with not a whole lot of bass, but the 11 songs all deliver everything you’d want on a death metal record.  I mean, go to the second track “Wheels of Convulsion”, or ” Stillborn Abomination”, “Celestial Devourment”  and “From the Abyss It Came” and tell me those do not scratch every single death metal itch you might have – blast beat, solos or slow stomp.

The brand new song “Acid Storm” follows suit, with maybe a little more control than the rest of the songs but shows these guys are consistent as fuck. My only minor gripe is the production for the Pestilence cover, which is way thinner and demo-sounding than the rest of the killer, from out of nowhere album.

Imagine the bludgeon of early Carcass, the melodious slice of Dismember, the heft of Grave, the catchy ferocity of Entombed, and the epic, dank, darkness of early Amorphis; pair all of that with a smidge of Naplam Death and General Surgery, and maybe even just a slight dab of old Katatonia (mostly in the lead guitar tone here and there), and what you end up with is a hands down, bonafide ripping badass of an album. At ten tracks, the longest clocking in at a mere three and a half minutes, Celestial Extinction is obviously a compact listen. There’s nothing too tech or flashy, or jaw dropping and dazzling to be found here, just good old fashioned awesome death metal. The kind that gets in, kicks your teeth out, and promptly exits the premises. It’s the kind of death metal that made some of us “older” dudes fall in love with the genre in the first place.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5TN0z8vBWA

Every song on the album is quite good. Damn good, actually. I don’t necessarily have a personal favorite as all of the material is top notch, and all have something gnarly and badass about them. From the catchy, gripping opener, “Cocoon Hecatomb”, the fast as balls pacing and blasting of ripper, “Dripping with Skin”, or the Benediction meets Entombed stylings of “Monastery Worms” to the grinding death surge in “Solemn Desolation”, the sick symphony of necrotic might that is “Cadaverizor”, or the closing title track, “Celestial Extinction”, with its brutal yet somewhat doomy drenched melody/theme that runs through the track; you’re simply going to be grinning from ear to ear with this album.

Achieving a sound that is as every bit as fresh as it is nostalgic, the material, while not overly produced, is clean and clear within its cavernous, filthy crunch. Speaking of crunch, you can tell that blue hat, faux admiral cartoon fuck on the cereal boxes to get the hell out, ‘cuz there’s a new Cap’n in town when it comes to crunch…all cheesiness aside, Celestial Extinction brings that crunchy groove in spades, as every single track has some sort of simple, fat crunchy monster riff that seems to steal the show. The only flaw with the album is that it’s backloaded to my ears, with the latter half shining just a bit stronger than the first. Though with every track being winners and all better than your average death metal affair, I can’t really say that is a true flaw. Hell, an album that gets better and better as it goes, showing its personality and individual traits more as the cuts get deeper sounds more like an actual praising point now that  think of it.

Hats off to Chris Anning/Cryptivore for crafting such a fine piece of death metal. Sure Celestial Extinction may not be ground breaking or genre defining, but it sure as hell is genre sustaining, and honestly, with death metal coming up on the big 4-0, I think that may just be much more necessary. Released digitally and on LP earlier this year via bitter Loss Records, the album is just now seeing a limited CD run courtesy of Awakening Records, so don’t dally on getting yourself a physical copy, or you may just miss out.