Necrocock – Practices of Undertakers

Tomáš Kohout is responsible for churning of the most demented riffs in Czech Republic’ black metal history, as evidenced by his work in Master’s Hammer. However, a lot of people are not aware of his little side project, Necrocock. Mirko from Misanthrophia Discos was wondering for a long time why no one ever re-released the Necrocock’s 1991 demo Parctices of Undertakers. He eventually contacted the man behind, the aforementioned Tomáš Kohout, and they agreed to re-release this iconic and one of the most important early 90’s Czech black metal demo recordings, once again professionally remastered.

So here we are with a re-issue of Practices of Undertakers, containing nine tracks of what I would call a mix of doom/black/atmospheric/ambient metal. The recordings are professionally remastered by Patrick Engel and the CD comes with a 12 page booklet, total lenght approx. 29 min. In other words; it’s a rather short recordings of nine short songs (incl. an intro “Smrt Je Teprve Začátek” and Outro “Řecké Ohně”), all delivered in their native language. Often can this type of music feel boring and exhausting, but this is definatelly not the case with Practices of Undertakers.

Unlike most of his collegues back in the beginning of the 90s, adopted a thrashier approach to their black metal, Necrocock went in a completely different direction on this demo, with slow pace and the inclusion of eerie keyboards, which makes it more atmospheric, doomish and ambient. Due to those doomy passages, Practices of Undertakers sounds like nothing we have heard before (remember we’re talking of 1991 here!). Necrocock adopted a style where they successfully combined the slowness and thicker, bassier sound of doom metal, with the shrieking vocals and heavily distorted guitar sound of black metal. Thus, it feels as Necrocock does a great job of capturing the ghastly and frightful ambience on this demo. Most probably it’s due to his experience of working in a funeral house at the time.

One important thing to note is that Tomáš re-recorded the demo as the debut full-length in 2004, eliminating most of the rawness, but keeping the unnerving atmosphere. Still, my favourite tracks of Practices of Undertakers demo are “Černý Mramor” (trans; Black Marble) and “Porucha Mechanických Pecí” (Failure of Mechanical Furnaces) which both, judging by the lyrical content and titles of the songs, refer to his work at funeral house and cremation process. I can even hear some Samael and influences, mostly due to those doomy passages, but also the likes of Satyricon, Moonspell etc.

Obviously, Practices of Undertakers is a must-hear for all fans of the genre and esp. the likes of Master’s Hammer, even though those songs are way more dismal sounding. For further info visit https://www.facebook.com/tom.necrocock