WhiteWorm Cathedral
 Season of Mist
Street: 10.28
Necrophagia = Autopsy + Impetigo + Mortician
The legacy of horror, terror and old-school death metal that is Wellsville, Ohio’s Necrophagia keeps getting better and better. Their seventh release, WhiteWorm Cathedral, is sure to open up the seven seals of Hell and unleash the apocalypse in the form of aural destruction and mental imagery assaults. Necrophagia incorporate an almost obsessive love for horror films which, in addition to the band’s own ideas and interpretations of those horrors, have always made for fun listening. I’ve never really been massively sold by one specific album from the band, as they’ve always had releases with great songs, but in a “one release” sense—nothing ever stuck. WhiteWorm Cathedral changes all of that in so many ways. The songwriting here has been tightened up to brutal execution for the band—and for death metal in general. It’s an extremely rare thing when I listen to a record and it resounds in my skull long after the songs have stopped. The dynamics offered on this new offering are plentiful. It brings the horror of what the album wants you to live onto a grandiose scale. Heavy and catchy riffs crunch with a grisly bottom end. The keyboards from Mirai Kawashima, who is also one of the primary members of Japan’s Sigh, elevate the already horrifying songs to an entirely more terrific, terrifying level. Everything I love about death metal and horror films is indulged in the 13 songs on record here. There’s a good deal of horror-themed death metal bands out there, but none of them sound like this album. Even more exciting is the fact that Necrophagia may not even be remotely close to peaking—they’ve gotten better with each new release, and with the near-perfect execution on WhiteWorm Cathedral, my excitement of what’s to come will be even more morbidly obsessive than before. –Bryer Wharton

This is an Extended Review from SLUG Magazine’s Top Five Albums of 2014.