LIK – Necro: Keeping the Corpse Moving
Released: April 18, 2025
How much room does LIK have to move when the band’s identity depends on Stockholm death metal sounding unmistakably like Stockholm death metal?
“Deceased” sets the terms immediately. Åkvik has described it as the Entombed song LIK had been trying to write for years, and the guitar tone makes the connection clear. The riffs scrape and buzz exactly as expected. Then Chris Barkensjö pulls the band from a mid-paced lurch into a skank-beat sprint while Åkvik keeps his phrasing locked to the snare. Short riffs leave small gaps in the distortion, giving the rhythm section somewhere to punch through.
“War Praise,” the first song written for the album, uses that same guitar sound differently. A blunt chord attack runs underneath a brighter melodic lead, opening the song without cleaning up its rotten edges. “They” cuts the pace again, settling into a chunky groove before a brief solo breaks the pattern. Joakim Antman’s bass stays close to the kick drum, then steps forward whenever the guitars pull away from the main chord shape.
The instrumental tracks were recorded live over three days at NBS Studio, with Åkvik adding his vocals later at Lawrence Mackrory’s Rorysound Studios. That setup helps explain why the tempo changes sound natural. Barkensjö often signals the next section through a fill or cymbal accent before the guitars make the turn. The snare has a dry crack, the cymbals spread around the beat, and Antman’s bass remains audible beneath the HM-2 grind. The record sounds filthy without becoming muddy.
“Worms Inside” compresses the fastest playing on Necro into just over three minutes. Tremolo-picked riffs and rapid drums match its story of someone being eaten alive by parasites, an idea taken from one of Åkvik’s nightmares. The middle section briefly opens into a melodic passage containing the band’s acknowledged nod to Metallica’s “Orion.” It is an odd detail to place inside such a frantic song, and the return to the main riff becomes more vicious because of it.
Åkvik spends most of the album in a hoarse, mid-low growl, clipping his lines to fit the riffs. The guests break up that texture at useful points. Linnea Landstedt’s sharper rasp cuts across his voice in “Morgue Rat,” while Nick Holmes brings his deep, hollow roar to the apocalyptic “In Ruins.” Their appearances suit an album built from compact horror stories: a man rising from his grave in “Deceased,” creatures hunting beneath a city in “They,” parasitic worms, battlefield slaughter, nuclear extinction, and several different kinds of necrophilia. Subtlety was never invited.
The pacing becomes just as important as the gore. “Shred into Pieces” tears through 2:17 of rapid drums and blunt chord changes. “The Stockholm Massacre” is nearly as brief, using a clipped rhythm to recount executions and royal violence. At the other end sits “Rotten Inferno.” Nearly six minutes long, it drops into slower, Autopsy-like territory, holding its chords until the distortion starts to sag. Swedish actor Daniel Sjöberg’s spoken passage pushes the song deeper into its murderer’s filthy little world.
So how much room does LIK find? More than the guitar tone suggests. The skank-beat turn in “Deceased,” the melodic lift in “War Praise,” the “Orion” wink inside “Worms Inside," and the long drag of “Rotten Inferno” all pull in different directions. The Stockholm sound supplies the tools. Necro gets its own shape from knowing exactly when to sprint, when to groove, and when to let everything rot slowly.
A ThisDayInMetal exclusive by Rob Joncas, founder of DeadNoteMedia.
