If you don’t know who this dude is you’re probably not having enough fun with metal in 2018. Necrosexual is a brand at this point between his comedic stylings, stripping, and occasionally hilarious interviews with metal bands on YouTube. Ok, ok wait before you close this tab hold on! He has pretty great taste in music and his debut full-length might have an ill-advised cover of “Paint it Black” but most of it jerks and wriggles it’s 80’s heavy metal ass off. His presence on the album is akin to Steve Sylvester on those late 80’s/early 90’s Death SS records but the guitars themselves tap into that same era of Celtic Frost, Venom and worship the altar of classic speed/thrash metal.

The vibe of the album is pretty tongue-in-cheek but with a little more punking around it wouldn’t be that far from resembling Warfare‘s ‘Metal Anarchy’ or Venom‘s ‘Calm Before the Storm’ something similarly cocky and clasically. These are good things to say about any metal record but it is impressive considering the largely unfunny nature of the Necrosexual’s video features could have easily given way to comedy metal like Massacration or Nanowar.

The album musically peaks between the ‘Damned in Black’-ened heavy metal of “Black Metal White Winter”, the “Procreation of the Wicked”-esque “The Lair Where No Light Enters” and the surly Pentagram/Paul Chain-ified doom-rock jam of “My Kind of Freaks”. Those three songs really highlight what otherwise feels like a still-formative musical personality kicking the can down the road. I like the high pitched King Diamond wails Necrosexual exerts just often enough but his gruff Hallow’s Eve grunt on “Bottomless Pit” is probably his most alluring yelping on the record for my taste.

Necrosexual is a lot of fun and has great taste in heavy metal, both of those things shine through on the comic book superhero debut that is ‘Grim 1′.  All of that pompous goofin’ aside this is an organic and heavy tribute to the dark and weird world of underground 80’s heavy metal that is well worth a few listens.  Here’s hoping he tours with this record and keeps the ‘burlesque’ engine firing hot.

Harder than diamonds. 3.5/5.0

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